


Chains

by jigoku-nozomi (NZM11497)



Category: Original Work, the GazettE
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Blood and Gore, Cannibalism (Accidental), F/M, Forced Orgasm, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Imprisonment, Kidnapping, Murder, Mutilation, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Previous chapters have been edited, References to Depression, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicide Attempt, Torture, switching POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2019-06-21 22:40:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 17
Words: 34,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15567927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NZM11497/pseuds/jigoku-nozomi
Summary: Nozomi Yoshimura was on her way home from a business trip in the next town over. It was getting late, and there was still heavy rainfall hindering her vision. What made matters worse was the stray dog that ran out in the middle of the road, causing her to swerve off and crash her car. The last thing Nozomi remembers is waking up hanging upside-down to the sound of clanging objects and heavy breathing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All Nozomi Yoshimura wanted was to go back home after her exhausting business trip. She ends up somewhere else and suffers through a new kind of hell.

_“Alright, everyone! Welcome back to Jams After Dark! We’ve come to the 10 o’clock hour, and we have a fine selection of songs to get you all in the nighttime mood, so stick around! Coming up next is ‘Tokyo’s Sweetheart’ by everyone’s favorite star, Nozomi!”_

“Fucking Christ…” she groans as she turns off the radio, continuing to drive home in silence. “If I have to hear that goddamn song one more time, I’m going to drive off a cliff.”

The woman driving sighed heavily as she continues to drive. Despite her being the one that came up with the popular song, Nozomi Yoshimura has had way more than enough of her life of fame for the moment. All she wanted to do was go back home where she could seclude herself from the outside world, where she didn’t have to go to interviews, sign autographs, and sit through boring promotion meetings. She was finally heading back home to Tokyo from said meeting in Osaka.

Nozomi immediately had regrets travelling there by car instead of taking the train with her coworkers, but crowded cars and unnecessary chatter wasn’t her cup of tea. She tried to convince her bandmates, manager, and staff to let her attend the meeting via phone call, but there was no way out of going in person. She put her manager through hell and high water out of spite and refused to travel by train, telling everyone that it would be better for her to drive there herself. It was a six hour drive both ways, and it didn’t help that she didn’t get much sleep the night before. She thought that listening to the radio would keep her awake, but it only made her sleepier.

“C’mon Nozomi, you only have a few hours left,” she says to herself.

She could hear her manager telling her, _“You know, it would’ve made more sense to just ride the train with us. Do you really think it’s safe for you to travel by yourself both ways?”_

Nozomi scoffs at those very words. _“It’s almost as if I know what’s better for me more than you do.”_ She rolls her eyes and kept driving.

It was storming on the way back to Tokyo—probably the worst storm the city’s had all autumn. This would be Nozomi’s preferred weather to be at home in; just hearing the raindrops hit the windows was making her sleepy. The longer she drove, the heavier her eyelids felt. She was considering pulling over for a bit to rest, but she was driving on a road heavily populated by the woods. With the amount of crazy stories all her friends would tell about crazed murderers inhabiting a woodland area like the one she’s driving through, Nozomi wasn’t willing to take that chance.

There were no houses, stores, inns, or any other building around for miles. There weren’t even any signs or streetlights around to tell her how much further she had to go. Her only source of light were the headlights, but even then she could barely see anything due to the heavy rainfall.

Despite the dangerous conditions, Nozomi decides to speed up a bit, wanting to get home as fast as she could. She quickly turns the radio back on, unable to stand the silence any longer. Unfortunately, all she got was static. The rain must’ve been interfering with the signals, so she just dealt with it.

“I swear to fucking god, I’m taking the whole week off,” Nozomi grumbles as she brushes her dark brown bangs from her face. She figured if she kept talking, she’d stay awake. She thought of calling her bandmate, Sumire again, but she didn’t want to be a bother. “I’ll just stay home and relax. Not gonna take any calls… Not gonna… leave my… bed…”

Talking seemed to have the opposite effect than the one she wanted. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to call Sumire. She clumsily searches her passenger seat for her coat. Her car wasn’t the tidiest, but it was more of an organized mess. She would throw things around but left them where they were so she could find her items easier. She quickly dials the number and puts the phone on speaker. However, the phone continues to ring without her getting an answer. She hangs up the phone and tosses it into the backseat.

Nozomi’s fatigue was taking a toll on her fast. She was struggling to keep her eyes open and one yawn escapes her one after another. _“It’s nothing but straight road, isn’t it?”_ she thought to herself. Desperate for a few moments rest, her head hangs a bit and she closes her eyes. Unfortunately, her foot began pressing down on the gas pedal even more as her car began to accelerate, swerving a little.

Nozomi made no attempt to wake up and her grip on the wheel was loosening. She just wanted to rest. She just wanted to get home as fast as she could, but she was just so tired. Everything around her became white noise and her body grew heavy. Her car erratically swerves left and right, nearly heading off the road a few times. Suddenly, Nozomi’s body tenses up and becomes paralyzed for mere seconds. There was a sense of dread temporarily looming over her as Nozomi springs awake.

She barely had time to react when she notices a stray dog running out in the road, causing her to swerve as hard as she could to avoid hitting it. Unfortunately, she drove too far to the left and crashed into a large tree. A large crash sounds throughout the empty roads as the airbags deploy, rendering Nozomi semi-conscious. The car alarm was blaring, and thunder began to sound.

Nozomi tries to exit her car. Her door was jammed due to the impact, so she had no choice but to break through the already shattered window. She stumbles through broken glass and does her best to slide through. She was quickly losing strength, but she manages to get out of the car. She lies down in the mud and feels around for her phone. It wasn’t on her person, and she couldn’t move to see if it was damaged from the crash.

Remembering that her phone was in the backseat of the totaled car, she resorts to shouting for help. “Anyone! Please, anyone! Someone help me!”

The more Nozomi yelled, the weaker she became. Eventually, she stopped shouting and the only sounds she heard were the car alarm and the rain hitting the asphalt. Giving up completely, Nozomi closes her eyes and let’s fate decide what happens next.

***

“Somebody! Somebody help me! Hey! Hey, lady! Help me!”

Nozomi slowly opens her eyes upon hearing a man’s panicked voice. She’s immediately disoriented as everything around her appeared upside-down. It wasn’t long before she noticed that she was the one upside-down. She tries to look around to the best of her abilities, but her vision remained limited. She couldn’t even see what the man looked like, all she could do was listen to him scream at her.

“Hey, lady! You gotta help me!” the man pleads.

“Where… where am I?” Nozomi quietly asks herself.

“Lady, can you hear me?!” the man shouts. “Quick, you gotta help me! He’s gonna be back soon!”

Nozomi was no longer paying attention to the man and began wondering where she was and how she got there. She gathers a bit of strength to try swinging up to free herself, but unfortunately it didn’t last long. She abruptly stops upon hearing clattering noises from an unknown place. She turns her body to the right and notices a stairway leading up to a door.

Moments pass and there were more noises coming from upstairs. Nozomi turns to look for anything or anyone else in the room when suddenly, the door slams open. The man from before begins shouting more frantically, moving around wherever he was and causing a commotion. Despite his screaming, Nozomi hears footsteps slowly making their way downstairs.

She couldn’t see much of anything that wasn’t the blood-stained concrete floor. Then out of nowhere, a pair of black boots appeared in front of her, and she could hear this person’s seemingly labored breathing. She gets spun around a few times and instantly becomes dizzier. The person stops spinning her and stalks over to the direction the man was.

Nozomi tries composing herself and tilts her head as far back as she could to see what was happening. She spots the mysterious figure walking towards a table. It was then that Nozomi could see the man that was yelling at her earlier. He looked extremely bloodied and bruised, and she notices his torso were covered with deep gashes.

There was no telling what the mysterious figure was about to do, but it didn’t take Nozomi long to find out. The figure raises its left hand, revealing four steel and rusted-looking blades on some sort of glove. The man’s eyes widen in panic and the only thing he could do was scream and beg for mercy. However, the figure ignores his pleas and jams the claws deep into his face, silencing the man instantly.

Nozomi instinctively screams in horror, completely mortified about what she had just witnessed. And now, she began screaming in a panic. Her body writhes in discomfort as she hears the sound of flesh tearing and the gushing of blood and muscles being ripped into. Moments pass and the sounds stop and were replaced with footsteps.

Nozomi tries wriggling free, but her aggressive movements only made her more disoriented, eventually tiring her out. The figure was now standing before her and the only sounds she heard were its heavy breathing and the blood dripping from the claws hitting the floor.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The man lets Nozomi down off the hook, but that's only the beginning of this vivid nightmare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! Sorry this took a while to update, but I needed to get back into the correct head space to write this story. I'll do my best to update this more regularly from now on. Thanks for your patience, and I hope you enjoy! Happy reading!

The mysterious figure reaches up and begins undoing the rope tied around Nozomi’s ankles. Once she was free, she immediately dropped head first onto the concrete floor. She lays there in pain for a moment before the figure grabs and lifts her from the floor. It drags her over to another table that was next to the man that was just murdered.

Realizing she could be the next victim, Nozomi starts fighting back with all the strength she could muster. Adrenaline was coursing through her body, giving her much more energy than before, but it wasn’t enough to fend off the murderer. The figure overpowers Nozomi and slams her onto the table, proceeding to strap her down.

Nozomi kicks and screams as loud as she could, but it was pointless. She was strapped down onto the table and a light was shone on her face. With her eyes readjusting to the light, she begins to make out the figure that was keeping her captive. It was man from what she could generally see, but there was definitely something off about him.

For starters, the first thing Nozomi noticed was the face mask he was wearing. There were three tubes coming from it: two from where the nose should be and one in place of the mouth. The third tube wasn’t connected to anything in particular, but the other tubes connected to something hidden within his long black jacket.

He had short raven hair that was a bit unkempt and appeared as if it hadn’t been touched in years. His piercing blue eyes stared down at her, examining Nozomi closely. His right hand appeared normal, albeit stained with dried blood and callused. He used that hand to tear off her T-shirt to reveal as much skin as he could.

Once her entire torso was exposed—except her breasts which were covered by her bra, the man placed his claws on her skin, starting from the area just beneath her chest and gingerly dragged them across her stomach. Nozomi winces as the cold steel came into contact with her skin. She was no stranger to the feeling of a blade dragging across her skin, but it was a completely different story with someone else doing it. The man restarted from the top and dragged across once again, digging a bit deeper this time around.

He continued to do this several times until the final time, his claws go as deep as they could into her skin. He drags them across at an agonizingly slow pace, causing Nozomi to shriek in pure anguish. The man stops midway and gets some of her blood on his fingers with his un-clawed hand. Her wounds were slightly deep enough for him to stick his fingers inside of her to get it. He takes his bloodied fingers and unexpectedly shoves them down Nozomi’s throat as deep as he could, hitting the back of her throat and making her gag in an attempt to breathe.

As he continued choking her, his claws left her stomach and traveled down to her jeans. He easily tore them to shreds and exposed the bottom half of her body. He tore through her panties with ease and began lightly grazing her inner thighs. Nozomi begins kicking her legs, trying to get him off, but the man slashed her thigh in retaliation.

The man removes his fingers from Nozomi’s mouth and backs away for a moment, seemingly admiring his handiwork so far. She coughed and whimpered, fearing that her life could end at any moment. But to her surprise, the man appeared finished for the moment and turns around tend to the dead man on the other table, no longer interested in Nozomi. At least not for the moment.

Nozomi was whimpering in agony as the blood from her wounds trickled down her skin. She wriggles around a bit, partly because of the immense discomfort she was feeling and the other part as an attempt to free herself from the restraints. To her surprise, it seemed to have been working. The restraints didn’t seem to have been that secure, so Nozomi used this to her advantage. She moves around a bit more, slowly and quietly sliding through the straps. She eventually frees herself and slides off the table. Despite the unbearable pain she was in, she bites her lip to keep herself quiet as she snuck her way to the wooden stairs.

Nozomi keeps her eye on the man to make sure he wasn’t paying attention to anything else. Seeing him too enamored with his handiwork, she makes it to the first step undetected and begins to ascend the stairs. She makes it up the first couple of stairs without issue, albeit being mindful not to cause too much creaking. The third stair, however, gave way right under her foot and broke. The man whips his head in Nozomi’s direction and charges after her.

Nozomi manages to get herself up and bolted out of the door and finds her way out of the building. She dashes through the woods with all the stamina she had, ignoring the pain that came with each step. She looked behind her to find the man rapidly catching up to her. She dashes forward as fast as she could, but unfortunately, the pain from her wounds became unbearable and she collapses into the mud.

“Help me!” Nozomi begins crying out. “Please, somebody help me!”

Before she could scream any more, the man covers her mouth and picks her up from the ground, dragging her back to the building. Nozomi kicks and screams to the best of her abilities, but the man wouldn’t let up. It didn’t take long for the two of them to make it back to the ragged cabin-like building. Once inside, the man tosses Nozomi onto the floor and immediately gets on top of her, straddling her.

He pins her arms to the floor and stares down at her with his cold, glowing blue eyes. He had the look of a depraved predator, and Nozomi was his feast for tonight. Nozomi could barely fight back, but that didn’t prevent her from constantly trying. She put the pieces together for what he was potentially about to do to her, and she refused to let that happen. She tries getting free from his grasp, but the more she struggled, the harder he squeezed.

He removed his right hand from her wrist and placed it around her neck, choking her as hard as he could. Nozomi used her free hand to try and push the man off her, but she was too weak to fend him off. She could feel herself going in and out of consciousness, but the feeling of cold steel caressing her cheek keeps Nozomi awake.

The man’s claws travel down Nozomi’s cheek and makes their way to her breasts. He rips off her bra and begins fondling her breasts, roughly squeezing them. Nozomi squirms in discomfort and pain as his other hand snaked its way in between her legs. His rough fingers rubbed her lips, but also had to keep her legs pried open to continue his assault.

Nozomi claws at the man, trying her best to get him off her, but with one hard punch to the face, she cowered and protected herself from any other attacks. The man places his hand in between her legs once more and growled at her, silently ordering her to keep her legs open. Nozomi’s legs remained closed and the man pried them open once more, this time with the assistance of his clawed hand.

Nozomi screams in utter pain as the blades dig deep into her skin, worsening the previous wounds. Once her legs were wide open, the man immediately shoves three fingers inside of her, violently thrusting in and out. Nozomi spasmed around, trying to fight against her body’s natural reaction. She attempts to fight him off once more, but this time, the man claws her upper chest. Nozomi’s shriek echoed throughout the empty, moonlit room, but the man wasn’t fazed by it.

The man finally removes his fingers and pins Nozomi down. She looks up at him through teary eyes, wishing he would show some sign of mercy. Deep down inside, she knew he wasn’t going to, but she became desperate. The man looks down at her with sadistic eyes; his mask made it difficult to tell what his expression was, but it wasn’t good for Nozomi’s case.

Through sobs and gasps, Nozomi manages to whisper one simple question to the man. “Who are you?”

For the first time, the man stops his ragged breathing and leans close to Nozomi’s ear. In a low, chilling whisper, the man answers, “Deadly… Craw…”

The moment his words have been said, Nozomi feels something poking her when suddenly the man, now known as Deadly Craw, suddenly thrusts forward inside of her. Nozomi yells in pain as he continues pushing forward, making sure he was deep inside of her. The feeling was incredibly uncomfortable and Nozomi could feel something inside of her tearing.

Once Deadly Craw was as deep as he could be, he remained motionless for a few moments, staring straight into Nozomi’s panicked brown eyes. She wanted to look anywhere else, but she was fixated on his gaze. She didn’t know what it was that forced her to maintain eye contact. Deadly Craw slowly pulls out a bit, causing Nozomi to wince in pain. Her body found his size pleasing, but her mind was utterly disgusted.

He stops halfway out and pushes back in at an agonizing pace, taking his time to do as he pleased with his new plaything. Nozomi bit her bottom lip once again to stifle any moans that could slip out, unwilling to give this monster any form of satisfaction from violating her. He repeats this numerous times, seeming to be content with watching Nozomi failing to suppress her body’s reaction to him being inside of her.

Wanting to test her limits, Deadly Craw’s movements picked up in speed, as well as strength. What started out as a slow, sensual rhythm quickly became rough, violent thrusts that sent intense surges of pain and pleasure coursing through Nozomi’s body. Her shouts were a mix of agony and satisfaction as her body and mind were conflicting with one another.

It remained this way for what seemed like hours until Deadly Craw pulls out to pick Nozomi up and drag her to the basement. Once downstairs, Nozomi momentarily wriggles free and stumbles away just for him to catch her and pin her against the wall to continue what he started. Somehow, it was more painful being taken from behind, and Nozomi’s mind was going crazy. There was just no way she was feeling any sort of pleasure from this. She felt the guilt and shame overtake her, wanting to turn back time to take that damnable train instead.

Deadly Craw shoves her face into the cement wall and moved with conviction. His right hand was placed around her neck as his clawed hand held her tightly by the waist, digging into her skin a bit. Nozomi had a hard time trying to breathe through her constant sobbing and Deadly Craw choking her. The intensity of his movements became too much for Nozomi to handle, and within moments, she lets out a piercing shriek as her body shudders from her unwanted orgasm.

Deadly Craw stops for a moment and backs away from her, letting her collapse onto her knees. She continues sobbing, feeling completely disgusted with herself. Her sobs turned into dry heaving; she felt sick to the point of vomiting, but Deadly Craw grabs her by the hair and yanks her off the floor. He turns her so that she was facing him, lifts up one of her legs, and shoves himself back inside of her.

Nozomi fruitlessly tries to push Deadly Craw away, but he overpowers her and continues on with ease. Nozomi began tensing up around him, causing Deadly Craw to give low, animalistic growls. He presses his body against Nozomi, making sure his grunts were right in her ears, embedding them into her mind. He wanted this image burned into her head and would stop at nothing to make sure it happened.

Deadly Craw’s movements quickened and became more violent. He was on the verge of his climax and he grabs Nozomi by the face, forcing him to look at him when he reached it. Nozomi herself was on the verge of another orgasm, but did her best to fight it off. She couldn’t bear the humiliation any longer, but she had no choice in the matter. Deadly Craw gave a couple more thrusts before one final push forward, his growl drowned by Nozomi’s scream. She could feel him twitching inside of her, pumping everything he had into her.

He backs off and Nozomi collapses onto the floor once again. Deadly Craw grabs her hair and forces her to look up, only to have him finish off on her face. Nozomi kept her eyes and mouth shut tight, trying her best not to vomit on the spot. Her stomach turned into knots and her body was in excruciating pain. All she wanted was this nightmare to end.

Moments pass and Deadly Craw pushes Nozomi away, readjusting his clothes. He leaves her sitting there, filthy and broken. She had no more energy to cry, shout, or make any sound. She just sat there staring at the floor, wondering if he was going to get rid of her in this very moment. However, that wasn’t the case.

Nozomi looks towards Deadly Craw’s direction upon hearing the rustling of chains and other equipment. He walks back over to her, chains and shackles in hand, drags her to the corner of the room, and attaches the chains on her ankles. He connects them to one of the pipes in the room, preventing her from attempting to escape. Once he was finished, Deadly Craw lifts Nozomi’s chin to have her look up at him, stares at her for a moment, and finally walks away.

He heads back upstairs, turns the light off on the way out, and leaves Nozomi downstairs. The only light in the room was the flickering dim center light on the ceiling. The only sounds Nozomi heard were something dripping from the pipe she was attached to and her heavy breathing. She wipes the filth off her face as best she could and lays down on the freezing concrete floor, desperately wishing this was all nothing but a nightmare.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morning arrives, and Nozomi's nightmare continues on to a more violent degree.

The next morning comes, and Nozomi is harshly woken up by freezing cold water being thrown onto her. She screams as she wakes, protecting her body from whatever hell comes her way. She looks up to find Deadly Craw staring at her, dropping the bucket. All he does is stare at her, seemingly waiting for her react in some way.

Nozomi sits up, still covering her naked and wounded body. “What do you want?” she asks in a shaky voice.

Deadly Craw says nothing and goes to remove the shackles from her ankle. Once they were off, he backs away and stares at her again, waiting to see what she does. Nozomi doesn’t move a muscle, fearing that the same thing would happen if she tried running again. She just sat on the floor, shivering and terrified.

Realizing she wasn’t going anywhere, Deadly Craw drags her off the floor and places her onto one of the tables, strapping her in place once again. Nozomi didn’t even bother trying to fight back, knowing there wouldn’t be any point in doing so. All she does is squirm around in discomfort because of how tight the straps were this time around.

Nozomi stares as her captor rummages through some sort of toolbox on the other table. There were an assortment of tools: hammers, screwdrivers, drills, and so on. He pulls out a power saw and turns it on, looking back at Nozomi to see her reaction. Naturally, there was panic in her eyes as she began squirming even more. He walks closer with the power saw and Nozomi’s movements became more frenzied.

He slowly lifts his hand and gradually inches the saw towards Nozomi’s face. Now was the moment Nozomi began to scream at the top of her lungs, desperately wishing to wake up from this nightmare. But the reality of the situation was settling in, and Nozomi was in fear for her life more than ever. Deadly Craw holds the saw mere inches away from her face with the blades still spinning.

Nozomi suddenly stopped screaming and just stared at the saw blades in her face. She didn’t know what to do, she didn’t know how to react, despite knowing she couldn’t even do that much. Her breathing becomes shallow and rapid, much to the point of hyperventilating. Then, Deadly Craw turns off the saw and tosses it to the floor. He stares down at Nozomi, continuously examining her. He walks around the table a few times before stopping at the bottom end.

Nozomi’s knees were bent upward, so he had to force them to straighten. He spreads her legs open and quickly puts restraints on her ankles, preventing her from closing her legs. He walks up to the top half of the table and places a restraint on her head, preventing her from moving it around.

Panic increased inside of Nozomi and she was on the verge of having an anxiety attack. She began hyperventilating some more as her heart practically pounded out of her chest. It was getting harder and harder to breathe and it took everything Nozomi had not to black out from the lack of oxygen she was getting. Instinctively, Nozomi began thinking about her medications but quickly remembers that she had forgotten them when she headed to Osaka.

However, Deadly Craw paid no attention to her panic. He moves back to the bottom half of the table and marvels at the scars on her thighs. He traced the wounds ever so delicately with his fingers. They haven’t completely healed, but the bleeding had stopped. Just a small nick with his claws makes Nozomi shout in utter pain. She was sensitive to the touch, and Deadly Craw took this into account. Ignoring all regards, Deadly Craw squeezes down on Nozomi’s thigh as hard as he could, causing her to yell once again. His other hand, however, was headed to a much more sensitive area.

For the first time since yesterday, he takes off the clawed glove and sets it aside. His fingers caress her inner thighs, slowly moving back and forth. Deadly Craw looks at Nozomi’s body to see how it would react, and to his surprise, it was reacting positively to the sensation he was creating. He wanted to see all the emotions he could make her feel, good or bad. Without warning, Deadly Craw thrusts three fingers forward and enters inside Nozomi.

The pain from last night was still intense—so intense that Nozomi couldn’t even scream to express her pain. Her body became paralyzed and she wasn’t making any sounds; she just remained motionless on the table as Deadly Craw pulls his hand back, just to thrust it forward again. He continues this motion for a bit, maintaining his gaze on Nozomi’s bruised and bloodied face.

Nozomi’s body twitched with each thrust and whimpers escaped from her lips. The majority of what she was feeling was excruciating pain, but somehow, there was pleasure mixed in with it. It completely baffled her that she was feeling any amount of pleasure from this torturous experience. She began feeling physically ill at the thought and prevented herself from throwing up.

 _“You should be ashamed of yourself!”_ a voice inside her head tells her. _“You’ll be nothing but a filthy whore from now on! This is all your fault!”_

Finally, Deadly Craw removes his hand and begins to unstrap Nozomi. Once she was freed from the restraints, she immediately curled tightly into a ball, wishing that he would just leave her alone. There couldn’t have possibly been anything more he could do to her. There just couldn’t be…

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. Deadly Craw grabs his claws to put on, yanks Nozomi by the hair to hold her down, and holds his bloody claws to her neck. He had murder in his eyes and he could end her life in an instant if he chose to do so. He doesn’t break eye contact as he begins to drag his claws across her neck.

“No, please!” Nozomi finally shouts. “Please, don’t do this! Please!” She begins to sob and continues pleading for her life. “I’ll do anything you want, just please don’t kill me! Please, I beg you! Please!”

Deadly Craw ignores her pleas and continues cutting into her neck. Nozomi begins frantically kicking and tries to push him away, but it was no use. Her body was too weak and injured for her to keep it up. She just lied there, crying and gasping for air as she began hyperventilating once again.

Becoming annoyed with her unsightly display of fear, Deadly Craw throws her onto the floor and drags her back over to the corner. He chains her to the pipe once more and stares at her. Nozomi continues to sob, unsure how to feel about this sudden act of mercy, but fearing that it may only be temporary.

Deadly Craw forces her to look into his murderous blue eyes. His hoarse voice whispers to her, “Not… yet…”

He pushes her face away and makes his way back upstairs. Nozomi eventually calms down and the room becomes silent once again. The only sounds in the room were the dripping from the pipe and Nozomi’s sniffles as she tries pulling herself together. The immense pain she felt all over her body was tiring her out, but there was something keeping her mind occupied.

Deadly Craw’s last words before heading upstairs repeated over and over in Nozomi’s head. The only conclusion she could come up with about the meaning is that he wasn’t ready to get rid of her yet, implying that she’d have to go through more bouts of torture before her life ends for good.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been three days since Nozomi's disappearance, and Detective Asa Matsumoto has been assigned on the case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, just a head's up. This is going to be in the POV from Asa and Risa's perspective. I didn't want to cause any confusion, so I hope this clears things when you go into the chapter. Happy reading!

_“It has been three days since the disappearance of Tokyo’s own Nozomi Yoshimura. The 25 year old singer has been reported missing by her manager, Kenji Yamaguchi when he couldn’t come into contact with her after leaving a business meeting in Osaka. Both the Tokyo and Osaka police departments have taken on the case, and have asked community members to inform them immediately if you have any information regarding her disappearance.”_

Chief officer Ueda turns off the television and addresses his officers about the case. “Listen up, everyone. It’s been 72 hours since Nozomi’s gone missing. Typically, the chances of finding her safe decreases, but there’s still a chance nonetheless. Her manager has requested this specific unit to get the job done.”

He picks up a folder and hands it over, “Matsumoto, I’m putting you in charge of the investigation.”

Asa Matsumoto is the head officer of the cold case and missing persons division, as well as one of Tokyo’s well-respected policewomen. Because of the numerous cases she’s solved throughout her 5 years on the force, it made sense for her to be put in charge of this case.

She looks through the files and nods, “You got it, Chief.”

“I know you can do it, Matsumoto. Now, let’s get a move on. We don’t have much time.”

Everyone goes back to their business as Asa puts on her glasses to continue looking through the files. It had all of Nozomi’s basic information inside: her address, description, places she’s worked, medical information, everything. Asa takes notes on some of the key information when someone suddenly drops a blue pamphlet and a set of keys on her desk. She looks up to find her partner, Risa Tanaka, at her desk.

“Got the subpoena to check her apartment and the manager gave us the keys to let ourselves in. Should we head down and take a look?”

“In a minute,” Asa answers, continuing to write. “Just let me finish this up.”

“You got it, boss.” Risa sits at her desk across from Asa’s and spins around in her chair. She picks up a pencil and twirls it around in thought, “How does one of Tokyo’s most famous singers end up missing so easily? Paparazzi always watching her every move, every day; you’d think she would have a lot of security around her to make sure she’s safe, right?”

“These things can happen, Risa,” Asa plainly responds. “Even the strongest defense has a weak point, and no one can prepare for anything like this.” She finishes jotting down her notes and gets up to leave. “The question is how could someone as careful as Nozomi end up going missing?”

Risa quickly grabs her jacket and follows Asa to the elevator, “What do you mean by that?”

Asa flips through her notes, “Her files said that she has severe social anxiety—”

“And she thought becoming a singer was a good career choice?” Risa jokingly asks.

Asa just gives her a look and continues, “And statements from people close to her say that she takes extra care to minimize contact with other people as much as she can.”

“Sounds more like anthropophobia to me,” Risa says as the two got in the squad car.

“It’s not that bad of anxiety. She manages to perform for crowds of thousands, it’s more of the business aspect of things.” She goes through her notes some more, “From the statements I’ve read, Nozomi wasn’t the type to attend meetings in person and was very particular about those who work for; employing people that she knows personally instead of hiring unfamiliar faces.”

“Okay… What does that have to do with her disappearance?”

“Her manager said that instead of going to Osaka by train along with everyone else, she decided to take the six hour drive by herself. She didn’t even accept her manager’s offer to ride back with her to Tokyo. Everyone left before she did, and no one has heard from her since.”

“You thinking something might have happened to her before she left Osaka?”

“It’s a possibility. But for now, let’s just check out her apartment. For all we know, she could’ve came home and had something happen to her.”

The two make it to Nozomi’s apartment and used the key to let themselves in. Once inside, the two split up and search the apartment. For the most part, the place was immaculate. Nozomi had kept everything fairly organized and neat, with the exception of the occasional dirty dish or a book lying around. Risa stayed in the living room while Asa went to search her bedroom.

Despite how neat the living room was, Nozomi’s bedroom was the complete opposite. It was as if a hurricane ran through it and came back for a second round. Clothes were scattered all over the floor, there were piles of papers on the dressers, and her bed was a mess. Her dressers had a variety of items on it, from makeup to jewelry to empty medicine bottles. Asa takes the medicine bottles into account as she takes a look around the drawers first, examining the papers that were on them.

A majority of it was crumpled up music staff paper while the rest appeared to be lyrics to old and new songs. Some of the notes were handwritten and mostly illegible, but Asa could sense an air of frustration coming from the unfinished notes. There were some that appeared to be something different, so she pulled those out and read them next. They seemed to be journal entries, most of which were dating back to the previous week.

_“Oct. 4: Why won’t they listen to me?! It’s like every time I try to explain my situation to Y-san, it’s like talking to a brick wall. ‘Just suck it up, it’s only for a couple days.’ ‘It’s not that bad, it’s all in your head.’ BULLSHIT!!! If only they knew how much I hate this job, how much I hate all this attention. I think I’m going to do it tonight, I can’t take it anymore.”_

_“Oct. 8: Sumire’s such a fucking snitch. I knew I shouldn’t have told her. All she does is run her mouth to everyone else, and all of a sudden, I’m being ‘problematic.’ She had to stay over here the other night just to make sure I don’t ‘do anything stupid.’ The only stupid thing I’ve done is let a bunch of idiots run my life…”_

_“Oct. 11: I have a meeting in Osaka tomorrow. Y-san wants me to take the train there, but he knows how I feel about them… Or maybe he would if he’d just listen to me. I’ll just drive myself there. There shouldn’t be an issue with that, right? Okay, I can’t forget my medicine. I HAVE to bring it with me. I don’t want to get in trouble with that again. Note: REMEMBER TO BRING YOUR FUCKING MEDICINE!!!”_

Asa quickly rummages through all the drawers and finds more empty medicine bottles. “How many pills was she taking?” Asa thought to herself, a bit of worry in her tone. From the journal entries, she quickly suspected that a possible suicide can’t be ruled out. She leaves the bedroom with the notes in hand and heads into the bathroom, which Risa was already looking through.

“Did you find anything, boss?”

“A few things. Have you looked through the medicine cabinet?” Asa asks, opening it.

“I was about to. Why?”

Sure enough, there were more pill bottles with Nozomi’s name on it. They seemed to be pretty full, so Asa figured she had gotten them recently refilled before leaving for Osaka. One of the bottles were for Prozac, one was for Trazodone, and there was a tablet case with only Wednesday through Saturday still full. Asa continues looking through the cabinet, discovering what was in the tablet case.

“Birth control pills,” she quietly says.

“That’s not good if these are still here,” Risa points out. “Hopefully she’s not into _that_ kind of trouble.”

“Have you found anything in the living room?”

“Nothing useful, no. This place looks like it hasn’t even been touched since last week.” She looks at Asa’s hands, “What do you have there, boss?”

“Pages from a journal, I think,” Asa explains. “Seems to me that Nozomi’s been having some issues between her manager and bandmates.” She hands the notes over to her partner.

Risa skims through them and lets out an audible gasp, “Oh my God, what if she…?”

“We can’t jump to conclusions just yet,” Asa says. “We have to talk to the others to see if they know anything.”

Risa nods as the two leave the bathroom and head towards the door. Suddenly, the door begins to open and someone was coming inside. Asa and Risa instinctively draw their guns and was greeted by the terrified shriek by a stout, balding man seemingly in his late 50s.

“Tokyo Police! Who’s there?!” Risa shouts.

“Please, don’t shoot!” the man begs, entering the room with his hands in the air.

“What are you doing here?” Risa ask, putting her gun back in the holster.

“I… I just wanted to see if Nozomi was home. I-I mean, I know she’s still out there, but…”

“Are you her manager?” Asa asks.

“Yes, Kenji Yamaguchi. I was hoping to come by and see that Nozomi was home safe. Did you find anything? Is there anything I can do to help?”

Asa and Risa look at each other momentarily before Asa asks, “Yes. Was Nozomi acting… _normal_ before leaving for Osaka?”

Yamaguchi shrugs. “Well, I don’t know what your definition of _‘normal’_ is, let alone hers. As far as I was concerned, she seemed fine before and during the Osaka trip.”

“What about afterwards?”

“That’s the thing: no one has seen her since the rest of us left to head back here. At first, I thought she was staying with Sumire and Kazuya at their family’s home and came back with them. But when I called them, they told me Nozomi wasn’t with them, nor have they heard from her.”

Risa scratches her head, thinking. “Well, did you know about all the meds she’s been taking? There’s a lot of empty bottles lying around.”

“Yes, I told her to make sure to bring them when she was packing. Unsurprisingly, she told me she ‘forgot them.’” Yamaguchi says, rolling his eyes.

“What are the medicines for?”

“The Prozac is for her depression and anxiety, Trazodone was for sleep, and I’m pretty sure you know what the third one is for,” Kenji cheekily says.

“Sir, I am not afraid to shoot you in the foot,” Risa flatly declares.

“She has depression as well?” Asa asks, ignoring Risa’s statement. “How serious is it?”

“Well, she’s been suffering through it for the past 10 years of her life, so it surely couldn’t have been easy for her. Then again, she doesn’t tell anyone anything regarding it, so we all have to go off instinct and assume she’s okay.”

“Has she been known to harm herself?”

Yamaguchi sighs, “Again, she never tells anyone anything about what goes on with her. It wasn’t until I found out that she was cutting herself in the bathroom before _and_ after a gig a few years back. Nozomi was in and out of the mental hospital so many times, she was practically living there. Once she was done with the last program she was in, she strictly told everyone that she didn’t want to go back. So, I made her see a therapist and her psychiatrist prescribed her some medicine. She tells us she’s doing fine one day and then does something that says the complete opposite the next.”

Asa takes a moment before asking her next question, “Is it possible that Nozomi may have committed suicide after the trip?”

The two officers expected some sort of somber demeanor from asking Yamaguchi the question, but all he did was let out a frustrated sigh and answered. “She threatened to kill herself before, during, and after the trip. She was really upset that she had to attend the meeting in person and made a big fuss about it. I made sure someone was with her at all times right up until we headed back home. I was told that she left a couple days after everyone did, so who knows what she could have done then?”

Asa and Risa look at each other once again before Asa asks, “Is there a way we could possibly talk with her bandmates to get their side of things? Especially this Sumire person.”

“Of course. They should be finishing up at the studio any minute now. I can take you there.”

Not wasting any time, the three of them made their way to the studio. It takes about an hour for them to arrive, but they were able to catch the other band members leaving for the night. They go back inside and head to the meeting room, willing to answer any questions. The three members, Sumire, Kazuya, and Masaru, were individually questioned by Asa and Risa.

Masaru Suzuki was the drummer that was interviewed first. He let both officers know that he was fairly new to the band and that he and Nozomi weren’t that close because of it. He recounted his whereabouts before, during, and after the trip and lets Asa and Risa know that he rarely talks to Nozomi outside of meetings and studio sessions. After being cleared, Masaru is dismissed and the next member comes in to be interviewed.

Kazuya Watanabe was the bassist of the group and Sumire’s younger brother. He admits that although he and Nozomi weren’t all that close, they were known to hang out occasionally with the rest of the band. He explains how he and his sister were already in Osaka by the time everyone else arrived; they had family they were visiting at the time and was told to meet everyone at the meeting once the day arrived. Afterwards, he tells the officers that he and his sister stayed back with their family for a couple more days and then returned to Tokyo. He says that he hadn’t spoken with Nozomi after the meeting and had assumed she had gone home with the rest. Kazuya is dismissed and Sumire comes in behind him. If Asa and Risa were to get any potential leads from someone, it would be her.

“Full Name?” Asa asks, leading the interrogation.

“Sumire Watanabe.”

“And you are Kazuya’s…?”

“I’m his older sister.”

“Okay. How long have you known Nozomi?”

“Wow, it’s been a long time,” she recalls. “It’s been about 10 years now, I think.”

Even Risa pauses her notes to look at Asa. “So, it’s safe to say the two of you are pretty close?”

“Yeah, we’re kind of best friends. I’m one of the few people she actually trusts around here.”

“Well, hopefully you can help us out here,” Asa continues. “Do you remember where you were before, during, and after Nozomi’s disappearance?”

“Well, Kazuya and I had already been in Osaka prior to everyone coming down for the meeting. We had been there for a couple days before that. But before that, I was staying with Nozomi at her apartment before leaving. I had stayed with her all day during the meeting and the day after. Once everyone left, she told me she was going to head out after them.”

“Did she?”

Sumire shakes her head, “From what everyone’s telling me, she didn’t leave until Kazuya and I left. People kept asking us if she was with us and we told them that she wasn’t. I thought maybe she was still sightseeing around the town to calm her nerves down after the meeting.”

“Did she call you to tell you exactly when she left?”

“Yeah. She called me as soon as she was pulling off, and then called me back when she was halfway back home. That was the last time I’ve heard from her.”

Asa thinks for a moment. “In your honest opinion, do you think Nozomi could have killed herself upon returning to Tokyo?”

Sumire’s eyes widen at the very thought, “I-I don’t think so! She seemed fine when I last spoke to her. She told me she felt better and couldn’t wait to go home. From the phone call, she sounded like she was still on the road, driving home.” She pauses and gasps, “Do you think she could’ve gotten into an accident? The day she left, it was storming pretty bad.”

“It’s a possibility,” Asa states. “But right now, let’s just try to stay positive, alright?” She gets up and gestures Risa to do the same, “Thank you, Ms. Watanabe. You’ve been a great help.”

Sumire gets up as well, grabbing her coat. “You’re welcome. Please, if there’s anything else you need from me, don’t hesitate to let me know.” Sumire is dismissed and everyone was allowed to go home. Asa and Risa get back in their squad car and drive off.

“None of this is really adding up,” Asa says. “Two of the three members didn’t even leave until days later, one member rarely speaks to her, and her manager is of no help either.”

“Well, Sumire did say that Nozomi called when she was halfway home,” Risa recalls. “Maybe she stopped at an inn or something. I know I wouldn’t want to drive for six hours straight in that storm last week.”

Asa thinks for a moment. “Well let’s see if there’s even an inn to stop at along the way. If not, we’ll head to Osaka to check out the Watanabes’ alibi.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Turning the car around to head in the right direction, the two officers head to Osaka in hopes of finding more clues.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asa and Risa head down to Osaka to find potential leads, but make an unexpected discovery halfway there.

Asa and Risa were about two and a half hours into their ride, and they were just entering Shizuoka. It was nearing sundown, but they still had a bit of sunlight left before so. Asa had been looking through Nozomi’s files and reassessing her notes for the entire ride, while Risa hummed along to the radio. However, feeling the boredom settling in, she decides to start up a conversation with her superior.

“So uhh… boss.”

“We’ve been partners for two years now, Risa,” Asa chuckles. “You don’t have to call me boss anymore.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s more out of respect, y’know?”

“Well, what do you want?”

“This whole case is still confusing to me. Nozomi Yoshimura, one of Tokyo’s beloved musicians, turns up missing because she thought it was a better idea to drive to and from Osaka in one of the most horrible storms we’ve had all month… than to take a train with people who could keep her safe.”

“People with anxiety sometimes work in irrational ways,” Asa explains. “She’s probably the same person who hires a personal assistant because she’s too afraid to make her own phone calls, or the type of person to hold on to a piece of garbage for a while instead of throwing it away because she doesn’t want people to stare at her as she walks.”

Risa glances over in confusion, “Do… do people actually act like that?”

“That’s anxiety for you, Risa. And since she has severe social anxiety, I can only imagine how terrifying the thought of being on a train with a bunch of people you don’t know and/or trust for hours was for her. It may seem weird to you, but to her, that’s what she needs to do to cope.”

Risa just shakes her head, unwilling to try and understand the seemingly outlandish concept. “And I take it that another way of her coping is to threaten suicide if things don’t go her way? It still shocks me that she would even take it that far.”

“As unfortunate as it is, Risa, people think that way sometimes.” Asa flips through her notes some more. “Her manager said that she has been dealing with this for 10 years; that’s practically half of her life. We can’t go shaming her for how she deals with her struggles, all we can do is try to provide her help.”

“I guess,” Risa reluctantly admits. “But my question is why call and lie to your friend about going home? For all we know, she could still be in Osaka somewhere.”

“Which is why we’re going there, right?” Asa sarcastically asks.

Risa begins to pout a little, but quickly thinks of another topic, however. “Say, are you into urban legends?”

“Not particularly, no,” Asa flatly answers, not bothering to look up from her notes.

“Oh c’mon, not even a little bit? There are some creepy ones I read up on recently. Y’know, since it’s October and all.”

“I’m sure they’re all spooky in their own right,” Asa groans, rolling her eyes.

“Hell yeah, they are! Like there’s this one about a man that’s a doctor during the day, but when nighttime comes around, he turns into this crazed chainsaw killer!”

“He kills chainsaws?” Asa jokingly asks.

Risa laughs, “You know what I mean. But don’t you think that’s kinda cool?”

“What’s so cool about a chainsaw killer doctor?”

“I don’t know. It’s like he’s living a double life, y’know? Rumor has it that he’s still at large, waiting for nighttime to come again.”

“Sometimes I worry about you, Risa,” Asa says, shaking her head.

“Ooh, how about this one? There’s this urban legend about this man called Deadly Craw.”

Upon hearing the name, Asa stops what she’s doing and looks forward with a bit of panic in her eyes. Shivers ran down her spine, but she quickly shakes it off and pretends to play it cool. “Deadly what?”

“Deadly Craw,” Risa repeats. “Don’t ask me why he’s called that. But anyway, legends say that he inhabits some forest in Japan—not sure which one, though—and he kidnaps, tortures, and kills anyone who steps foot in his woods. Legends have it that he’s been here for _centuries!_ Rumor has it that he lives in the woods near the roadside, much like this one, and he could even jump out at you just for driving by it.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Asa says, still feeling a bit panicked on the inside.

“Who knows? Maybe he took Nozomi when she was driving home,” Risa says, chuckling.

“If that was supposed to be a joke, it wasn’t funny,” Asa coldly states.

The smile on Risa’s face quickly disappeared and she clears her throat, “Sorry, boss. I’ll shut up now.”

Another half hour passes and there was still no inn or pit stop in sight. It was getting dark and the two of them decided to wait another 10 minutes or so until they continue on straight to Osaka. However, on the way there, Asa spots a huge distraction on the side of the road.

“Risa, pull over.”

Risa does so and notices what Asa was looking at. The two of them get out of the car and walk close to the silver car that was crashed into a tree.

“Risa, look in the folder and find Nozomi’s license plate number.” Asa asks as she turns on her flashlight.

“On it.”

As Risa goes to check the license plate number, Asa gets closer to the car. The car was completely totaled beyond repair and appeared untouched for days. Spider webs were forming on the side mirrors and other parts of the car. Before Asa inspects even further, Risa whistles to get her attention.

“Hey boss! This is her car. The subpoena said we’re allowed to check it if we ever found it.”

Asa gives her a thumbs up and proceeds to investigate. She rummages through broken glass and other damaged items, trying to find some evidence of a possible kidnapping. Risa goes over and helps with the search. Risa looks through the backseat and finds her cell phone as Asa looks through the front to find her jacket and purse. The rest of the contents in her car were mainly trash that had been in there for a while.

Risa examines the phone, “Hey, her phone’s still intact. Too bad it’s locked. Probably have to get the tech guys to hack into it. What do you have over there?”

“Well, wherever Nozomi went, she didn’t seem to need her wallet.” She flips through the worn-out wallet. “Her driver’s license, bank cards—pretty much every form of ID is in this wallet.” She looks through the purse next. It was mainly full of candies, makeup, and band-aids. Asa found it a bit odd for her to be carrying a couple packs of them until she found the reason why. She puts on a latex glove before sticking her hand in and pulling out a slightly bloodied pocket knife.

Risa stares at it with wide eyes, “Wh-what’s that doing in her purse?”

Asa examines it, “Maybe this is the reason why she disappeared. It fits in with her management’s statements so far.”

But before Risa could agree with her, she had one question in mind. “Okay, but how could Nozomi kill herself and then crash her car? Or even if she crashed her car before she had the chance to kill herself, where’s her body?”

Risa brought up a good point. Asa didn’t quite know how to answer the question herself. She continues looking around with her flashlight and finds a possible lead. “Risa, look over here.”

Risa comes over and notices drag marks starting from Nozomi’s car, leading deep into the woods. The two look at each other, confirming their suspicions of foul play involved.

“Whatever the case may be, someone must have found her to help or came to do more damage,” Asa responds. “Either way, we need to get this car back to Tokyo. There could be something else useful in there.”

“I’ll call to get it picked up,” Risa says, pulling out her phone.

As Asa continues searching through whatever she could, shivers ran down her spine once again as her mind begins going a hundred miles a minute. The sight of a broken case filled with CDs suddenly move time backward five years. She was driving down this very road, but she wasn’t alone in the car.

“Hey, Earth to Asa,” a young girl’s voice says, waving her hand near her face. Her dangling silver bracelet adorned with blue forget-me-nots jingles in her ear. “I hope you’re paying attention to the road.”

The younger girl looked no more than 15 years of age, and she was practically a spitting image of Asa: the same short, curly brown hair, the same tannish complexion; they even wore the same brand of eye glasses.

Asa shakes her head and chuckles, “I am, I am. I thought you were taking a nap.”

“I was, but I got bored.”

“How do you get bored taking a nap?” Asa laughs.

“Beats me,” the young girl answers, laughing as well. “Hey, can we listen to some music?”

“Sure, you pick.”

The young girl goes through the glove compartment and looks for CDs. She finds one of Nozomi’s albums and pops it into the radio. Asa glances over to her for mere seconds before returning her attention to the road, nearly crashing into a stray dog standing dead center in the road. She swerves off the road and crashes into a large tree.

The car alarm blares as Asa goes in and out of unconsciousness. She could hear the young girl screaming in terror for her. “Asa! Asa, help me! Asa!”

Asa eventually comes to and spots an ominous figure dragging the young girl away, blood-crusted clawed hand holding her by her hair. “Ju… Junko…”

The figure simply stares as the young girl struggles to free herself from her captor. His piercing blue eyes staring straight through her soul, watching as she struggles to stand. Asa tries to get out the car as quickly as she could, but her body was weakening from the crash. She could barely stand on her feet, let alone chase the man who was now dragging the young girl away.

“Asa, help me! Asa!”

“Junko… Junko…! Junko!”

As the man and young girl disappear into the woods, Asa suddenly comes back to reality with Risa holding her by the shoulders. “Hey boss, you alright? You were spacing out there a moment.”

Asa shakes her head and pushes her away. “I’m… I’m fine. Did you call to have the car picked up?”

“Yeah, they said just leave it here and they’ll come get it by morning.” Risa gives her superior a concerned look, “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I said I’m fine!” Asa snaps, her voice breaking a bit. She quickly turns around to wipe whatever tears came down and headed back to the squad car. “Let’s get back. We don’t need to be all the way out here chasing ghosts.”

Although still worried about her superior, Risa returns to the squad car, this time in the passenger seat. Asa starts up the car and the two of them head back to Tokyo in a chilling silence.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> During the three days of her captivity, Nozomi hasn't eaten anything. Deadly Craw provides her first meal.

The sound and feeling of Nozomi’s stomach growling forced her to wake up from the most uncomfortable nap she’s ever had. She has been imprisoned with the monster known as Deadly Craw for what seemed like an eternity. There was no sense of time anymore; no clocks or any other way to tell the time where she was. For all she knew, she could’ve been trapped down in the basement for a week or so.

However, she was still on edge about her stay. In the time she’s been here, Deadly Craw had found her some clothes to wear: a dingy white T-shirt that was twice her normal size and a pair of briefs that she wasn’t sure was clean. Whatever the case may be, she put them on and have been wearing this outfit the entire time.

One thing Nozomi wasn’t provided, however, was a source of food. She was certain that she would most likely die in her sleep, either due to blood loss or starvation. Surprisingly, her severe wounds were close to somewhat fully healed, especially the ones she sustained on the intimate parts of her body. She still couldn’t believe everything was intact after what happened, but how was it possible?

Soon enough, Nozomi figured she could try to ask the man responsible as he made his way downstairs. She opens her mouth to speak, but her eyes focus on the tray of meat in his hand. She could feel her mouth salivating at the mere sight of it. She closes it and swallows the lump forming in her throat, wondering what he intended to do with the tray.

“Is… is that for me?” Nozomi quietly asks.

Without saying a word, Deadly Craw places the tray a few feet from her, forcing her to crawl over to get it. With no other choice, Nozomi cautiously crawls over to the tray. She felt his eyes staring at her as she crawled to and from her corner, possibly anticipating some sort of reaction for whatever reason. Nozomi goes back to her corner and look to Deadly Craw, confused, yet grateful.

She nods to him, “Thank you.” Nozomi had no idea what kind of meat she was about to consume, so she stalls on eating it, much to her stomach’s dismay. She had other matters to tend to.

“Hey… so, my wounds…” she begins to ask. “Did… did you take care of them? Because I don’t remember—”

“Eat,” he ordered.

The sudden command caught Nozomi off-guard. “But, I—”

“Eat,” Deadly Craw commands once again.

Realizing she wasn’t getting answers from him anytime soon, Nozomi simply nods and begins eating. Not all that surprisingly, the meat was raw but at this point, her stomach would take anything edible. It was very tough, but Nozomi manages to somehow get it down. The taste was a bit hard to understand, though. It tasted a bit like lamb, but there was this off flavor about it. What made things more unsettling was Deadly Craw watching intently as she ate. It takes Nozomi a minute to swallow the meat before she turned her attention to her captor.

“Why are you staring at me?”

“Eat.” That was the only word he seemed to want to say to her, no matter what she said in return.

She apprehensively continues eating, trying to get down as much of it as she could. The weird taste started becoming more and more unappetizing, so Nozomi eventually has to stop eating. She ate a little over half of what was on the tray, but turns down the rest, pushing the tray back to Deadly Craw.

“I can’t eat anymore,” she tells Deadly Craw. “I’m sorry, but… I don’t feel well now. What was that anyway?”

Taking the tray back, Deadly Craw walks over to the tables and places it on top of one. He stares at Nozomi, pointing to his head. “Remember…”

Nozomi was confused. “I don’t understand.”

He furiously bangs on the table and continues staring at Nozomi, repeating the word, “remember.” She took this word into consideration and began thinking, trying to remember something, anything. He just kept banging on the table.

 _“Why is he banging on the table?”_ Nozomi thought to herself. Was the table significant in all this? She remembers back to her first night in the basement, trying to remember something about the table. It was the rightmost table in the room. The same table… that the man he had killed was on.

Nozomi’s stomach immediately began violently turning and she became sick. Despite her best efforts, she inevitably vomits on the floor. She tries to stop, but it just kept going. Nozomi eventually throws up all the meat she had eaten, but the vomiting still wouldn’t end. She began crying as well but would get interrupted by something else coming out; that something else being blood. Just the thought of her throwing up someone else’s blood that she had eaten was too vulgar for her.

It was becoming too much for Nozomi and she just wished it would end. She looks up at Deadly Craw, who just stood there watching. He throws the tray of meat back at her and walks back upstairs. Nozomi just continues to vomit until her stomach felt completely empty. She was shaking and teary-eyed, afraid of moving one inch.

Her body grows weaker with each passing moment until eventually, Nozomi moves over a bit to the left and collapses, managing to avoid falling into the disgusting mess she made. Her breathing quickens as panic began setting in once again. It remained like this for a while until Nozomi tired herself out and becomes unconscious.

***

Nozomi’s eyes spring open as she sits up, finding herself naked in a cold river. She looks around the river for any sign of Deadly Craw, but he was nowhere to be found. The only thing Nozomi saw was the ragged cabin that she was being held captive in, numerous trees, and the full moon in the midnight sky. There was no way that her captor would leave her alone out in the woods by herself, but what other explanation could there have been?

It takes Nozomi a few moments to fully register that she was actually outside, breathing in fresh air. For the first time in days, she was able to put a smile on her face, albeit a little one. It had been the first time in a long time that she was relieved to alive and outside of her home. It was a welcomed change of pace from the copious amount of hell she’s been through these past few days. She figured that this was her opportunity to bathe for the first time since being here, but all Nozomi wanted to do was lie back a bit and take in this moment of temporary peace.

She lets herself float in the water as she stares up at the starry sky. The moon was shining particularly bright and it gave this sense of tranquility in the area. The sound of crickets chirping, the cool autumn breeze blowing by, rustling leaves along the way; even if this was the only time she’d ever experience this, Nozomi made sure to take it all in.

She chuckles and began speaking to herself, “And to think that I actually wanted to die after coming home. I’ve never seen anything like this…”

Nozomi closes her eyes as tears begin to form and continues to float in the water. She was used to the cold feeling at this point, and it started to feel soothing on her wounded skin. From the gashes left on her from Deadly Craw to the numerous cuts she had inflicted onto herself for the past decade, there was this sense of healing in this lake, and Nozomi wanted to bask in it for as long as she could. She let the cool, clear water take her in and lets its essence flow throughout her body, washing away whatever troubles she was going through. She opens her eyes to be greeted by the moon once again, and her smile grows a little more as well.

However, all good things must come to an end as she hears footsteps come toward her. Nozomi sits up and finds Deadly Craw leaving another set of clothes on a rock for her to change into and heads back inside the building. With the reality of this ongoing nightmare setting in once again, Nozomi reluctantly gets out of the lake and gets dressed, going back inside right afterwards. A brief thought of attempting an escape came to mind, but there was no way she could go through another bout with Deadly Craw.

Almost instinctively, she heads down the basement and sits in her corner, which was now free of the mess from earlier. Deadly Craw comes in behind her, places the chain back on her ankle, and heads upstairs, not saying a word as he turned the light out. All Nozomi could do was lie down on the floor and go to sleep, hoping that she would live to see the next day. Hoping to have another chance to experience floating in that lake.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nozomi lives to see another day, much to her surprise. Expecting some form of treatment from Deadly Craw, she instead has a glimpse of a completely different side of his.

_“Wake up… Run! He’s going to kill you! Get out of here! Run!”_

The incessant voices echoing in Nozomi’s head kept her awake for most of the night, but it was the painful feeling of Deadly Craw pulling on her hair that had awoken her from her slumber. She groggily looks up at her captor, wondering what he possibly could have wanted with her now.

She was prepared for another act of violation or some form of physical abuse. At this point, she was in no shape to fight back and was beginning to accept that there was nothing she could do to prevent it from happening. After undoing her chains, Deadly Craw lays her down on the all too familiar steel table, but this time, Deadly Craw doesn’t strap her in. He walks over to what seemed like an alchemist’s work station in the opposite corner from where Nozomi slept. There were tons of beakers, test tubes, strange liquids in jars, and many syringes.

Without thinking, Nozomi asks him, “What’s all that for?”

Deadly Craw stops what he’s doing to glare at Nozomi as if she had just offended him. But his expression relaxes a little bit as he examined her scarred body. Her wounds still weren’t healed, and a couple still looked to be open. He returns tinkering around his work station before approaching Nozomi with some sort of oddly green gel and what appeared to be a tattered photograph.

Deadly Craw gestures Nozomi to lie back down, and she does so without question. He takes a look at the photograph and then looks back to Nozomi. Nozomi, however, took that moment to examine the photo. She couldn’t see the front or what the photo was exactly, but judging by the look of it, it appeared to be somewhat ancient and was burned in a couple of spots. She wanted to ask him what the photo was about, but before she could ask, Deadly Craw takes off his glove and opens the jar of green gel.

He gives Nozomi an assuring look that he meant no harm and proceeded to rub the gel onto her wounds. A slight burning sensation arose in Nozomi’s body, but the pain wasn’t a bad thing? The moment the gel was setting in, Nozomi’s wounds gradually began to heal in minutes, taking time to clean and possibly disinfect them as well. Nozomi couldn’t believe her eyes as this seemingly magic gel was healing what could have been fatal wounds. Deadly Craw gestures her to open her legs so he could apply the gel down there as well, but Nozomi was not willing to compromise on that.

“I… I can do that myself,” she softly says, holding her hands out in hope Deadly Craw would hand her the gel.

He looks at her for a moment, seemingly disappointed, but hands her the jar and watches her apply it. Nozomi wasn’t going to question why he was watching her; she chalked it up as some sort of turn-on for him. Even if that were the case, it made her extremely uncomfortable.

Some time has passed and the spots where the gel was applied began becoming solid to the point that Nozomi could peel it off her skin. She gently pulled each strip of gel off and let out a pleasantly surprised gasp as she notices her wounds were practically gone.

For the first time around Deadly Craw, Nozomi smiles and looks up at him. “What is this stuff?” As per usual, Deadly Craw doesn’t answer, but takes the jar back and returns it to its proper place. Nozomi was still curious and continued trying to converse. “Whatever that stuff is, it’s amazing. I bet a lot of people would buy that. It could probably save lives, you know?”

The man remains silent as he walks towards the stairs, gesturing Nozomi to follow him. Nozomi hops off the table and follows Deadly Craw outside the cabin. They return to the lake where there were somewhat cleaner clothes lying on a rock next to the lake. Deadly Craw lightly pushes her towards the lake as he heads some feet away to sit on a nearby rock. Nozomi never thought that she’d get another chance to be out in the lake, but she was grateful for this opportunity.

She gets undressed, still in awe about the lack of scars on her body now, and eases her way into the freezing water. She sits for a moment, taking in as much fresh autumn air as she could. Despite the hell that surely awaited her back in the basement, the lake and forestry around it was incredibly peaceful. All the leaves on the trees were an assortment of reds, oranges, and browns. It seemed too surreal to be surrounded by such a lovely image. Nozomi wasn’t particularly one who enjoyed the outdoors much— she’d rather enjoy spending her time in the privacy of her own home—so this new experience was refreshing to say the least. She wishes she would get more opportunities to just come out to the lake and relax, but she knew deep down inside that it would never happen. In the back of her head, Nozomi couldn’t help but to feel as if this was some sort of ploy to get her guard down.

Nozomi takes this time to examine the places on her body where there used to be fatal wounds. Her wounds were severe to the point where she should’ve died shortly after she got them, but by some strange circumstance, she remains alive. It baffled Nozomi, but she knew there was no point in asking her captor. She then got to thinking about how silent Deadly Craw’s been around her since she got here. Only speaking in one to two-word sentences, she wondered how she could learn how to fully communicate with him. Talking to him was like talking to a brick wall, but from what she’s seen today, she figured he had some sort of emotion lying in wait.

Nozomi takes a look over at Deadly Craw sitting on a nearby rock. He still had the old, burnt photo in his hand, fondly staring at it. It was a completely opposite demeanor he had compared to all the cruelty he’s shown so far.

Possibly noticing her, Deadly Craw stares at Nozomi for a moment. She quickly averted her gaze elsewhere so as to not look suspicious. She looks at him from the corner of her eye and sees him looking off into the distance, not saying a word. Nozomi continues to look at him, wondering what she could figure out about him. This was her first time seeing him in a natural light, so she was able to see some details much more clearly.

One thing she noticed right away was his face, at least the part of it that she _could_ see. Despite his hands being callused and blood-stained, the top half of his face seemed flawless. Not one blemish could be seen, and his eyes appeared a lot gentler in the sunlight. The reason why, she noticed, was because they weren’t blue anymore, but a warm brown color. Nozomi tilts her head to the right a little, trying to understand how and why that was happening. Deadly Craw looks back at Nozomi, noticing her staring, but she never looked away. His eyes were still brown when he looked at her and for a moment he didn’t appear to be as scary as he was just the other night.

“What is it about you…?” Nozomi whispers to herself.

However, his gentle gaze immediately disappears as Deadly Craw’s eyes turned blue in seconds, looking out at the distance once again. Nozomi looks out in the same direction he was but couldn’t understand why.

“Is something the matter?” she asks.

Deadly Craw says nothing and looks back at her, gesturing to get out of the lake and get dressed. She did just that and Deadly Craw motioned for her to follow him. Nozomi had no idea what was going on, or what he possibly could have sensed, but she wasn’t going to question it just yet.

The two of them head down into the woods, following a pre-existing trail. This was Nozomi’s first time venturing into another area of the woods. She takes a look around the area, noticing different signposts. They all appeared to be signs signifying different trails as if this place were some sort of campground once upon a lifetime. However, most of them were destroyed, most likely by an evil monster not wanting anyone to know where he resides.

They walk for a bit longer, then stop at the sound of laughter. There were other people around, and Deadly Craw went to look. Nozomi follows him, not sure of what else to do. She accidentally bumps into him when he abruptly stops, pointing over to a couple sitting around a fire pit that had just been put out. They looked a bit older than Nozomi, about late 30s to early 40s.

“Where did they come from?” Nozomi asks Deadly Craw for some odd reason.

Deadly Craw backs away and stares at Nozomi while pointing to the couple. She looks over to the innocent couple and then back to him. “What about them?”

He gestures to bring them back to the hideout. Realizing what that entails, Nozomi becomes hesitant. “What? No, they’re not bothering anyone.”

Deadly Craw makes the same gesture, but this time more furiously, growling to show emphasis on his silent statement. Nozomi stands firm with her resistance, “They’re not doing anything wrong. Why don’t we just go back and—”

Before she could finish her sentence, Deadly Craw charges at her and pins her to a tree, holding his claws to her neck. His eyes were a vibrant light blue, a drastic contrast to the gentle brown ones she saw before.

The blades begin to dig into her skin as Deadly Craw growls one word. “Promised…”

Understanding that he was referring to her agreeing to do anything he said to stay alive, Nozomi desperately nods, hoping he would let her go. He does exactly that and shoves Nozomi in the couple’s direction. Trying to think of a way to lure them back to the hideout, she comes up with an idea, albeit against her better judgement.

She began roughing herself up a bit to make it appear as if she had just gone through a scuffle. Surely this elderly couple wouldn’t turn a blind eye to a pretty woman in distress, right? She ruffled her hair, dirtied her clothes a bit, and made sure the healing bruise on her face was showing. She takes a deep breath before heading towards the couple.

But before she left, Deadly Craw stopped her. Sensing the general gist of her idea, he grazed her cheeks and upper chest to make it seem like the scuffle was serious. He nods towards the couple’s direction and Nozomi heads off. Nozomi begins screaming at the top of her lungs, drawing the attention of the couple.

“Hello?” the older man calls out. “Who’s there?”

“Somebody help me!” Nozomi comes darting out to their campsite, sobbing and feigning immense pain. “Please, help me!”

“Ma’am, what’s wrong?!” the older woman asks, immediately checking on her.

“Please, he… he has my baby!” Nozomi screams, trying to come up with a viable lie.

“Who does? What’s the matter, ma’am?” the woman asks, trying to calm her down as the man comes over with first aid.

“I-I don’t know, just… just please help me! My baby!”

The man tries tending to Nozomi’s wounds, but Nozomi’s piercing shriek echoes throughout the woods. The man tries to be more careful, but Nozomi shoves him away and continues to sob.

“Please, help me! He has my baby!”

The woman looks to the man, who gives her a nod. The man heads over to the tent and comes back with a shotgun. Nozomi’s fake panic quickly turned real within seconds. A million thoughts race through her mind as she stares at the weapon.

“Show me where he is, ma’am.”

“Wait,” the woman interjects. “You’re not going there alone, are you?”

“I’ll be back, honey. You stay here.”

“No, I’m going with you,” the woman says, standing up.

“Honey—”

“Is it only one person, ma’am? If there’s more than one person going, we have more of a chance to rescue her baby.”

This wasn’t what Nozomi had anticipated at all. She looks over to where Deadly Craw was, but noticed he’s disappeared. She begins hyperventilating, unsure of what to do next.

“Ma’am, are you alright?” the woman asks.

“Come on, show us where he is.”

The man helps her off the ground and lets Nozomi lead the way. She tries her best to maintain composure as she follows the trail back to the hideout. Some time passes, and Nozomi spots the lake she was in earlier. She points to the building and leads the couple closer to it. She walks them through the back door and finds the room empty.

“Where did he go?” Nozomi quietly wonders.

“Does that door lead anywhere, ma’am?” the man asks, pointing to the basement door. It was left open and the lights were on downstairs.

Figuring out what to do now, she nods and leads them both downstairs. They make it down and much like upstairs, the room was empty. The couple look around the room in confusion as Nozomi backs away from them.

“Ma’am, there’s no one here,” the woman says. “Where is the baby?”

As Nozomi backs away, Deadly Craw comes from underneath the staircase, ready to attack. Acting on instinct, the man points his shotgun at him. “Stay back! Where’s the baby?!”

Deadly Craw looks back at Nozomi for a moment, nodding his head in approval, and quickly turns back around, jamming his claws into the woman’s stomach. The man goes to shoot him, getting a direct hit on the right side of his face. Nozomi screams in horror, wondering if Deadly Craw had been hurt. She begins to rush over to check on him, but Deadly Craw’s hand grabs the man by the face, squeezing down as hard as he could.

He kicks the woman off his claws and brings the man to his knees. Deadly Craw looks over at Nozomi; the right side of his face was extremely bloodied, and that side of his mask had been broken by the bullets. There was a hole in his cheek that went all the way through the other side of his face. But despite this gory scene, Deadly Craw remains calm and unfazed.

He points over to Nozomi’s corner, motioning for her sit in it. Hesitantly, she walks over to it and sits on the floor, still in shock about Deadly Craw’s lack of reaction from being shot directly in the face. While still holding the man by his face, Deadly Craw chains Nozomi back onto the pipe and nods at her again, almost as if he was letting her know that she had done well. No matter what happened to the couple now, Nozomi sat in her corner wallowing in the guilt she felt about forcing two innocent people to their untimely demises.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asa goes back to work and calls a meeting with her team. An unexpected, yet far fetched, theory is mentioned, and Asa's reaction concerns the others.

Asa walks into the precinct the following day and heads to her desk, getting straight to work. There were more files on her desk and she wasted no time going through them. She had requested any additional information on Nozomi, but there were extra folders filled with more “personal” documents.

“What’s all this, boss?” Risa asks, setting down a cup of coffee on Asa’s desk.

“Some files I requested. It’s nothing to worry about.” Asa takes a sip of her coffee and continues looking through folders. “Did the lab find anything on the car?”

“Oh, yeah.” Risa goes through her own folder and hands over a bunch of photos. “There wasn’t anything particularly interesting about the car itself, but some things inside the car could lead us somewhere.”

She hands over some papers with call logs from Nozomi’s phone. Risa made notes on the pages signifying which contact the phone numbers belonged to. There were a couple numbers in particular that appeared more often than others.

“I see she kept in contact with Sumire a lot. What’s this other number, the one about a doctor?”

“That’s her gynecologist’s number. Apparently, she had an appointment to have her tubes tied when she came back from Osaka. When Nozomi didn’t show up for her appointment, the doctor tried getting a hold of her, but couldn’t.”

“Sounds like someone didn’t want kids,” Asa says, jotting down notes.

“Could you blame her?” Risa asks. “She’s a busy woman, not necessarily living the lifestyle that’s fitting for a child.”

“That’s true.”

“And besides, with her mental health the way that it is, do you think she’s really capable of having a baby?”

Asa didn’t want to dwell too much on that topic, so she stops writing and examines the evidence photos. Other than the obvious damage done to the car, there wasn’t anything else odd about it. No blood, no strange markings on the car; it just looked like a totaled car. She looks at the photo of the evidence table, looking at all the items that were in the car.

The cell phone, CD case, her purse and the contents inside of it, her luggage; there were too many items to analyze individually. But there was something that caught Asa’s attention. There was a broken silver bracelet with vibrant blue forget-me-not flower charms all around it. Asa’s mind flashes back to the young girl moments before the car crash with the same bracelet on her wrist.

She snaps back into reality and changed her focus. “Was this all they found inside the car?”

“As far as I know, yeah… Hey, you alright?” Risa asks, noticing Asa’s strange expression.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Asa assures her. “Gather everyone in the meeting room. We need to figure things out.”

Risa nods and goes to gather the rest of the investigating team, letting them know that Asa wanted to see them. Asa sits at her desk for a moment, looking through the other files on her desk. She deeply sighs and tries her best to keep her composure while looking through the different documents. She began furiously writing notes about anything she found important.

“We’re ready to go, boss,” Risa says, breaking Asa’s concentration.

Asa quickly puts the files and notes in her draw and locks it, gathering the ones about the current case instead. “Okay, I’ll be there in a second.” No one knew about the other files, and Asa preferred it to remain that way.

Risa makes her way to the meeting room, with Asa following behind shortly after. Asa closes the door behind her and hands Risa the files to set on the table. She then walks over to the whiteboard and begins writing down Nozomi’s name and a bulleted list of clues that they had so far.

“Okay, so is there anything else you all found out?” Asa asks, beginning the meeting.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about this since we found her car,” Officer Nakano begins to explain. “Maybe the accident was staged.”

“Staged?”

“Yeah, like maybe Nozomi was never driving back home at all. Maybe something happened to her while she was in Osaka, and whoever is responsible made it seem like she was driving home to throw us off.”

“But the officers in Osaka have been searching just as long as we have,” Officer Michiko points out. “They’re at the point of giving up their end of the search because they can’t find anything on her. She’s never lived there, she doesn’t have family there; as far as we know, she doesn’t personally know anyone there that could lead us to her.”

“What about family here?” Asa asks. “She’s got to have at least one family member here, right?”

“All of her family members live in the States,” Risa says. “As far as they know, she’s safe and sound at home.”

“Well, have we questioned all of her coworkers?” Nakano asks as he heads to the board, placing pictures upon it. “We’ve talked to her bandmates, her manager. Maybe she’s close with the producers, or any staff members?”

“She keeps a pretty small friends circle,” Asa points out. “The only person even close to being our source of a lead has a valid alibi, so there’s no way she’s involved in this. We even checked her friend’s call logs, and they all match up to her alibi.”

“Okay, this doesn’t make any sense,” Michiko adds. “How does someone drive halfway between two prefectures and randomly disappears?”

“We could check the other towns she had to pass through,” Nakano suggested.

“But that’s gonna take a lot of time, and that’s the one thing we don’t have enough of right now,” Risa interjects. “Besides, if her car was found closer to Tokyo than any other town, then what would be the point?”

Asa thinks for a moment. “What if she’s in the woods?”

All three of her teammates look at her in confusion, with Nakano speaking up. “In the woods?”

“Maybe…” Asa begins writing her theories down on the board, “When she crashed her car into the tree, maybe she went to search for help? Also, Risa and I found drag marks leading from her car into the woods, so the possibility of a kidnapping can’t be ruled out yet either.”

Risa raises her eyebrow, “What are the chances someone was actually in those woods to help her, let alone kidnap her?”

“People camp at those woods all the time,” Michiko adds. “Even though they’re not allowed to, but you know how some people are. All the arrests I’ve made at those woods, they all had the same excuse: they were looking for something called—”

“Deadly Craw!” Risa bursts out in excitement. “Do you think he could’ve taken her?!”

Michiko and Nakano gave her a look as if she had five heads. “You do realize he’s not real, right?” Nakano asks, concerned for his teammate.

“Oh, c’mon!” Risa says, standing firm. “How cool would it be if we find out that she’s been captured by a psycho serial killer with a claw hand?!”

“I think you need to lay off the late-night horror movies, Risa,” Michiko condescendingly suggests. “Anyway, we need to… Asa? Hey Asa, are you okay?”

Asa’s expression was blank and there was a sudden fear in her eyes. Her body was visibly shaking a bit and her breathing became shallow. Her team sits her down in the chair in front of her as Nakano goes to get her some water. He returns moments later and helps her drink some of it, eventually helping her calm down.

“Boss, speak to us,” Risa says. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she quietly says. “I’m fine…” She takes a deep breath and makes her way out of the room. “I think… I think I should head home. I don’t feel well.”

“That’s fine,” Risa says. “We’ll finish up the meeting tomorrow, then?”

“Yeah. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

Without another word, Asa gathers all of her belongings, including the secret files and a couple evidence photos, and leaves to head home. About an hour later, she arrives to her apartment and heads straight to a locked room. She pulls the key out from her pocket, unlocks the door, and slams it behind her as she walked in. She turns on the light and the dingy bulb turns on, revealing the walls plastered with numerous amounts of paper, red string, and nearly illegible writing.

Asa sets her things down on the cluttered desk, shoving some things off to try making room for the new files. The first thing Asa pulled out from the folders was the evidence photo containing the bracelet. Her eyes overflow with tears and her heart grows heavy, wallowing in the painful memory of what happened all those years ago. She had given up not too long before the new year started, but this case brought back some form of hope for Asa.

She goes to the leftmost wall and simply stares at it through her teary eyes. It was covered with different articles of newspaper clippings, printed out news stories from online, and scraps of paper with a bunch of things scribbled on them. The main theme of it all being one thing: Deadly Craw.

Asa takes a deep breath and closes her eyes for a moment. When she opened them back up, she was behind the wheel of her car, sitting next to the younger girl from the last flashback. This time, the young girl was staring outside her window for a moment before turning her attention to Asa.

“What’s wrong, sis?” she asks.

Asa shakes her head and continues driving, “Nothing, I’m fine.” Asa takes a quick glance and notices the silver bracelet with forget-me-not flower charms on her wrist.

“Okay then. Just keep your eyes on the road.”

“I always do,” Asa replies, chuckling. “Did you and mom ever find the fabric you needed to make your costume?”

“No, not yet.” The young girl changes the station, “But she told me when we got back that we could go shopping tomorrow. Wanna come with us?”

“Sorry, kiddo. I have work tomorrow. Pretty long shift.”

The young girl pouts, “Being a cop must be tough, huh?”

“It can be,” Asa says, ruffling her sister’s hair with one hand. “But I do what I can to keep you and many other people safe, you know?”

The young girl cheers up a bit, “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I just wish we could hang out more…”

“That’s why we took this trip, right?” Asa points out. “I took all this time off just to spend it with you, and who knows? Maybe we could do it again next month.”

The young girl’s eyes light up, “Could we?! Maybe we could head to the beach this time!”

Asa laughs and ruffles the young girl’s hair again. “We can definitely look into that.”

“Can we listen to some music?” the young girl asks.

“Sure, you pick.”

And as if time flashed forward, Asa was suddenly crawling on the ground, watching the young girl being dragged away by an ominous looking man with a claw hand. The young girl kicks and screams, trying to free herself.

“Asa! Asa, help me! Asa!”

“Junko…” Asa begins to call out. “Junko! Junko!”

In the blink of an eye, Asa was back in her apartment, lying on the floor in the fetal position. She was physically shaking in fear and endless tears streamed down her cheeks. She lets out a pained scream, beginning to sob uncontrollably for the rest of the night.

***

Next morning rolls around, and against her better judgement, Asa returns to work. She was exhausted, in all aspects of the word, but she sat down at her desk like it was any other work day. Risa comes in shortly afterwards and sets a cup of coffee on her desk.

“Mornin’, boss. How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” Asa answers, downing half of her coffee almost instantly.

Risa looks at her superior in concern but doesn’t push the situation further. Before she could say anything to change the subject, Chief Ueda gathers everyone’s attention to the television as he turns it on.

_“Breaking news: More campers have gone missing in the past 24 hours. Saito Hamada (45) and his wife Aiko (42) have been reported missing by neighbors earlier this morning. They’ve informed authorities that the two were on their way to Shizuoka and were expected to be home sometime last night. When the couple never returned home, neighbors grew concerned and informed authorities immediately. If you have any information regarding their disappearances, contact your local police department.”_

Ueda turns off the television and turns to everyone, “Listen up, people. I know our priorities are on finding Nozomi right now, but we also have to make room for this case as well. Whoever is available to take this case, please do so. Everyone else, get back to work.”

He goes back into his office and everyone else goes about their business. Risa looks over to Asa, “Shizuoka’s not that far from where we found Nozomi’s car. They said the couple were campers; maybe they went out into those woods you were talking about yesterday.”

Realizing some resemblance of a connection, Asa immediately grabs the folder for the missing campers case and calls her team into a meeting. If there was an opportunity to get closer to solving her personal case, Asa wasn’t going to let it slip by.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deadly Craw tortures the kidnapped campers, but decides to let Nozomi go out for a walk after seeing how uncomfortable she was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: I'm not sure if you all saw the new tags I've added, but I'm putting this warning here to inform you there will be a suicide attempt in this chapter. If this sort of thing makes you uncomfortable, please refrain from reading this chapter.

The blood-curdling screams of the elderly couple echoed throughout the basement, and Nozomi had to remain there to witness it all. She was chained to her corner, forced to watch as Deadly Craw dissects the man’s still living body while his wife was lying on the table next to him, beaten and bloodied. Nozomi had to look away whenever the woman threw up due to the horrific sight she was forced to watch.

The woman screams, “Why are you doing this?! Why?!”

Deadly Craw doesn’t answer as he continues digging around inside the man’s body. The man was hooked up to an IV drip that contained a strange purple liquid that was constantly being injected into his torn apart body. Yet somehow, the man was still alive, conscious, and aware of what was being done to him. He couldn’t struggle, he couldn’t speak; all he could do was watch as this monster toyed around with him like some grade-school science experiment.

Deadly Craw lifts up the man’s intestines, tilting his head a bit as he stared at them. He extends his hand towards the terrified woman, displaying her husband’s organs in a teasing fashion. The woman struggles to free herself and the man’s eyes widen in horror as he himself witnessed the insides of his body making their way outside.

Nozomi just looks on, unable to turn away from the horror show. Something was compelling her to continue watching, no matter how badly she wanted to look away. This was a different kind of sadism that she has seen of Deadly Craw. The Deadly Craw she’s used to was violent and reckless. This one, however, was much calmer and more methodical in his torturing. Nevertheless, it was terrifying to witness.

Nozomi notices that she was in plain view of the woman and sees her staring at her. “What have you done?! This is all your fault!” the woman screams. “You did this to us! You did this! I hope you die and rot in hell, you evil bitch!”

Deadly Craw rushes to the woman and gives her a brutal slash across her upper chest, causing her to shriek in pure agony. Deadly Craw looks over to Nozomi, who was completely turned away from the chaos, covering her ears. He walks over to her and kneels down next to her.

Nozomi looks at him with tearful eyes. “Make her stop…” she quietly pleads.

Deadly Craw takes a moment to examine Nozomi’s state. She was visibly shaking in fear, and it showed in her eyes as well. Her breathing was becoming rapid and shallow, and he notices her digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands, deep enough for them to begin bleeding. He removes her hands and places them to her sides, giving her a stern, yet concerned look. Suddenly, he looks to the shackle around Nozomi’s ankle. For some reason, he makes quick work of undoing the shackle and walks back over to the tables. Nozomi stares at her unrestrained ankle for a moment, and then to Deadly Craw.

“What are you doing?” she decides to ask.

Deadly Craw looks over to her and simply says, “Walk…”

Surprised by this random request, Nozomi slowly gets up and makes her way to the stairs. Her eyes never leave Deadly Craw’s sight as she wonders why he’s letting her go all of a sudden. Was this permanent or does he expect her to come back? Whatever the case, she walks up the stairs and takes the back door outside to the lake. She considered taking some time to sit in the lake for a while, but upon hearing the woman’s shriek from downstairs, Nozomi thought it would be better to go away from all the commotion. She follows one of the hiking trails and wanders from there.

“I wonder how long it’s been,” Nozomi begins to say to herself. “I feel like I’m losing my mind… Maybe I’ve already lost it…”

She continues to walk down the trail, constantly looking around her surroundings while kicking a stone she stumbled across. “How do people even end up here? This isn’t even a campground or anything. Why would anyone _want_ to come here?”

She continues kicking the stone, still thinking out loud. “How did _he_ even get here? There’s no way he’s able to survive being out here for so long, especially in that… house or whatever.”

She pauses, “How have _I_ been surviving this long? Why doesn’t he just kill me already?” She walks a bit further, “What’s the point of me even being here anymore? No one’s going to find me. They’ve probably forgotten about me back home anyway.”

Nozomi bitterly chuckles, “It’s not like they really cared about me that much. Everyone just thinks I’m this rude bitch that does nothing but whine and make excuses. The only excuse I have to make up is the one for even being in this god forsaken place.”

Nozomi’s steps picked up in speed and conviction. “What’s the point of all this anymore? Every time something goes right in my life, I always find a way to fuck it all up. And for what?! Just to repeat the cycle over and over and over and…”

With each word she spoke, Nozomi’s body continuously filled with anger, frustration, sadness, and hopelessness. The thoughts in her mind that she’s tried her best to fight off for the past week have been making their way back, and because she hasn’t been on her medicine, they came back worse than before.

Nozomi continues to walk until she stumbles across the couple’s old campsite. It had remained untouched since earlier, and with her stomach now suddenly growling, Nozomi began searching through the camp for food. To no avail, she comes up empty and collapses on her knees, unsure of what to do now. Nozomi tightly hugs herself and looks around, wondering how far she had gone.

She looks back in the direction she came and pondered about heading back to Deadly Craw. But there was something compelling her to stay where she was and plan some way to escape. This was as good of an opportunity as any to plan a getaway. She knows she wasn’t followed, and even so, it was Deadly Craw’s idea for her to go for a walk.

“I bet he wants me to run…” Nozomi quietly says to herself. “This is what he wants… isn’t it?”

She slowly gets off her knees, “He… he’s testing me, isn’t he?” Her breathing becomes rapid and shallow as Nozomi begins to have an anxiety attack. “You want me to run, don’t you?! Just so you could drag me back and torture me!”

Nozomi frantically looks around the campsite for any potential weapon and comes across some rope. There seemed be a fair amount of it as she holds it up to inspect it, trying to figure out how much she needed for what she wanted to do. Nozomi takes the rope to a nearby tree and carefully climbs it. Once she found a sturdy branch to sit on, Nozomi takes some time tying one end of the rope onto the branch and tying the other end into a noose.

She creates the noose with ease, having done this several times before. Despite being in the middle of an anxiety attack, Nozomi remains somehow calm and focused, not letting anything distract her from what her end goal was. She creates a nearly perfect noose and places it around her neck. She pulls the rope as hard as she could, making the noose was as tight as possible. Once she struggled to breathe with just the noose being around her neck, she looks off in the direction where Deadly Craw’s hideout was.

“I’m done playing your games, you bastard,” Nozomi bitterly says. “I’m done with everything!”

She spits in his direction, internally cursing the day she ever came across that monster, cursing the day she backed out on attempting to end her life once again. With nothing left to say or think about, Nozomi shoves herself off the branch. The rope prevents her from falling off completely, but steadily tightens around her neck. It was extremely painful to endure, but Nozomi barely struggled to free herself. If she was going to leave this nightmare, it was by her own means.

The noose continues to strangle Nozomi. Her body naturally tries to struggle for air, but Nozomi tried even harder to repress that reaction. It was becoming extremely difficult to breathe, but Nozomi didn’t care. Eventually becoming exhausted, Nozomi’s body grows limp as she closes her eyes and let fate decide what happens next.

As fate would have it, the rope suddenly snaps and Nozomi falls face first onto the ground, violently coughing and gasping for air. However, she didn’t have much time to do so when she feels the familiar set of claws digging into her chest and dragging down to her waist. She hears enraged growling in her ears as the claws repeat the same action over and over. The growling becomes louder and suddenly, a shout of anger sounded, nearly deafening Nozomi.

Then, a chilling whisper of a familiar voice goes into her ear, “Not… yet…” Deadly Craw drags Nozomi by her hair, forcefully taking her back to the cabin.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deadly Craw brings Nozomi back to the cabin, but things take a few unexpected turns.

“No, please! I’m sorry! Please, don’t do this!”

Nozomi had been repeatedly shouting and pleading, hoping to receive some mercy from Deadly Craw on the way back to the cabin. However, she was ignored, and it only seemed to make him even angrier. Nozomi thought she had witnessed the worst of Deadly Craw’s rage, but she was about to receive a rude awakening. They make it back, and Deadly Craw shoves Nozomi onto the floor, immediately pouncing on her to attack. He punches, claws, chokes Nozomi with a ferocity like no other. Each attack was harder than the last, and Deadly Craw’s rage-filled growls echoed throughout the room. Nozomi tired her best to protect herself from the assault, but it was useless. Deadly Craw’s outrage overpowers her, and he showed no signs of relenting.

He grabs Nozomi by the neck and begins to strangle her with all of his strength, having the desire to feel her throat crush under the pressure. It wasn’t that long ago when Nozomi felt this same sensation, but now that it was Deadly Craw causing it, her desire to die quickly faded. She kicks her legs, trying to get him off of her. Her legs flail around for a moment until she finds a gap and kicks him right in between the legs.

Deadly Craw gives a pained snarl as he was forced to let Nozomi go, giving her a chance to try and escape. She bolts out the front door and makes a dash through the woods. Nozomi never ran so fast in her life, and she wasn’t going to slow down anytime soon. She doesn’t even bother to look back and continues sprinting ahead. She could hear Deadly Craw chasing after her, and he didn’t sound that far behind.

Nozomi pushes forward, hoping she would be able to outrun him. Before she even realized, she was nearing the road where she crashed her car. She forces her tired legs to move faster and began running down the road. Deadly Craw was steadily gaining up on her, motivating Nozomi to run faster. She takes one look behind her and notices Deadly Craw was getting closer and closer. Before she had time to react, she hears the blaring horn of a car, and looks in front of her, facing it head on.

She instinctively stops as Deadly Craw runs past her, taking the impact of the car hitting the left side of his body. He appeared unfazed while the car was totaled as if it hit a brick wall. The car alarm sounds, and the airbags deploy as Deadly Craw moves over to the driver’s window, breaking through with his claws and grabbing the driver by the head. Realizing the driver was still alive, he proceeds to dig his claws into the driver’s neck and pulls their hair with his other hand, ripping the entire head off the body. He throws the head onto the ground and walks back over to Nozomi.

“Ungrateful…” he growls.

Before Nozomi could respond to the vague statement, they were suddenly back in the basement. Deadly Craw shoves her onto the concrete floor, pressing her head down as hard as he could. He dragged her face across the floor, forcing her to feel the cold, gritty concrete scrape the skin off her face. Afterwards, he went back to viciously beating her over and over again until the wounds that were newly healed completely returned, looking as if they were never healed at all.

This was more than just an assault to assert dominance or to intimidate her, this felt extremely personal. The emotional pain in his screams were too evident to hide, but conveying that only made Deadly Craw angrier. He pins Nozomi down on the floor and stares down at her with his murderous blue eyes. Nozomi shook her head to avoid his gaze, but there was something compelling her to look him in the eyes, almost as if she were staring death itself in the face. This was going to be the way her life ended, whether she liked it or not.

Deadly Craw pauses for a bit, doing nothing but staring down at Nozomi. Nozomi’s eyes never left his gaze; she didn’t want to take the risk of finding out what would happen if it did. Suddenly, she notices something odd happening with his eyes; the colors were switching back and forth from the icy blue she was used to seeing to the brown from earlier ago at the lake. And if she didn’t know any better, they were beginning to tear up.

“Your eyes…” Nozomi mutters. Deadly Craw stops and stares blankly at her, his eyes completely brown now. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

As if acting out of character, Deadly Craw gets off of Nozomi and begins frustratingly walking away, not saying a word to her. Nozomi springs up to follow him upstairs without thinking about possible consequences.

“Hey!” she calls out to him. “Hey, aren’t you going to answer me?”

“No!” Deadly Craw bellows. “You… answer me…” Nozomi freezes he walks closer to her, his eyes beginning to switch colors again. Deadly Craw rubs his neck for a moment and begins to speak once more, “Why… choose death?”

Nozomi blinks at him, “What?”

“Why choose death?!” he yells. “Tell me!” His hoarse voice was on the verge of blowing out due to the man’s intense rage.

From what little expression Nozomi could see, however, she could tell that it was painful for Deadly Craw to speak. This was the most he’s ever said to her at one time, and the pain with each word was evident to her, both physical and emotional.

“I… I don’t know,” Nozomi finally answers. “I just…”

Deadly Craw backs her into a wall, enclosing her with his arms at each of her sides. “Death… is pointless… Choose… to live…”

The sudden switch from his malicious nature to this seemingly concerned person only brought more questions than answers. “What do you mean?”

“You…” Deadly Craw continues, trying to save whatever voice he had left, “can live… forever…”

Nozomi shakes her head in disbelief, trying to get a grasp at whatever nonsense he was speaking, “What? Are you crazy?”

Deadly Craw stabs the wooden wall inches from Nozomi’s face and stares at her with his blue eyes, “You can… and you will…”

He takes his other hand and gently lifts Nozomi’s chin, forcing her to remain eye contact. “Live… for me…”

Nozomi couldn’t come up with any plausible way to respond to Deadly Craw’s cryptic statements. She didn’t have much more time to dwell on it as Deadly Craw grabs her by the wrist and takes her back downstairs. He shoves her on one of the tables and proceeds to strap her down. The last thing he wanted Nozomi to do was find another way to hurt herself. Nozomi struggles for a moment, but abruptly stops. Once Deadly Craw was finished, he stares down into Nozomi’s eyes, brushing the hair from her face.

“We will live… forever…”

Without saying another word, Deadly Craw turns off the lamp above the table and heads back upstairs, slamming the door behind him. Nozomi couldn’t begin to process anything that had just transpired. Living forever? His sudden change in demeanor? Nozomi’s mind couldn’t comprehend it all overnight, but it certainly tried to do so anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! I know it's been a little over a week since I've last updated, but I think I'm starting to get some motivation to keep working on this story. I put a lot of thought and planning into it, and it makes no sense for me to just abruptly quit. As always, thank you for reading and feel free to leave any feedback! It'd be greatly appreciated!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asa and her team head out to the forest to look for any potential clues for any of the recent disappearances. They were able to find a couple pieces of evidence, but Asa becomes more focus on something else.

The clock strikes at about 1:00am, and Asa was sitting on her couch, still trying to figure out if there was some sort of connection between the most recent disappearances with Nozomi’s. All she could gather was that they were both considered lost somewhere going between Tokyo and Shizuoka. The only difference was that they found evidence leading to Nozomi, but not for the other campers.

Alongside the new case, Asa goes through her personally requested files for a moment or so. She started making her own connections to Nozomi’s case and this one. Yet again, the only similarity was the location of both disappearances. No evidence had shown any possible suspect or any other significant clue. She looks through all the evidence photos one last time before turning in, intently searching for some sort of lead.

The photos taken of Nozomi’s car had shown nothing new or special; not until Asa examined a photo taken at a bit of a distance from the car. She puts on her glasses to possibly get a better view and instantly spotted something peculiar in the background. Behind the tree where the car had crashed, there appeared to be a mysterious figure looking on as if they were being a witness to the aftermath. What made things even more bizarre was that the figure seemed to be staring right at Asa, seemingly wanting her to notice its presence.

Chills run down Asa’s spine as she sets the photo down. “He’s toying with me…” she mutters to herself. “He knows I’m looking for her.”

Asa quickly grabs her phone and begins dialing up Risa. Moments later, Risa tiredly answers the phone. “What’s going on, boss?”

“I need you and the others to form a search party for me. We’re heading down to that forest and look for any possible clues to Junko’s disappearance.”

“Wait a minute, who’s Junko?”

Realizing what she just said, Asa shakes her head and corrects herself. “Sorry, I thought that was the woman’s name. I meant Aiko and her husband. There has to be something there we can use to help find them.”

Risa groans, but in an understanding tone. “I’ll call them later and form a party. Right now, you should get some rest, boss. Good night… or morning, rather.”

Risa hangs up the phone, leaving Asa in silence. Asa hangs up and heads to her bedroom, immediately plopping down on her bed. She doesn’t bother turning off the light as she tosses and turns in an attempt to try and get some rest. The image of the mysterious figure constantly flashes in her mind, preventing her from thinking about anything else. The screams of the young girl in her memories echo through Asa’s mind, tormenting her even more.

Unable to sleep, Asa sits up in her bed and stares off into the distance. There was no way to get over this living nightmare, and she had no idea how to even begin to cope. Asa looks over towards her nightstand and picks up a photo frame, holding it ever so carefully. It was a photo of a younger looking Asa with and older couple standing on each of her sides, and a little girl standing in front of her. Tears stream down Asa’s cheeks as she stares at the little girl.

“I’m going to find you,” Asa quietly says. “I’m going to find you… and he will pay for what he did.” Asa lies back down on her bed, turns off the lights, and attempts to go to sleep, holding the photo close to her chest.

***

Morning rolls around and Asa and her team are driving down to the woods near Shizuoka. She and Risa were in one car, Nakano and Michiko were in the car behind them, and a couple more cars with other officers behind them. It was mainly silent in Asa and Risa’s squad car, so Risa decided to break the silence.

“So, our people found the couple’s car and brought it back to the lab.”

“Did they find anything?” Asa asks, not bothering to look in Risa’s direction.

“Nothing noteworthy,” Risa answers. “No DNA or anything like that; in fact, the car seemed to be untouched since the Hamada’s went missing.”

“That’s always helpful,” Asa sarcastically mutters, rolling her eyes at this useless information.

Risa glances over at Asa, “Is everything alright, boss? You’ve been acting so strange lately.”

“Don’t worry about me, I’m fine,” Asa quickly answers. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“You say that, but you’ve been in a weird mood for a couple days now. Are you sure everything’s alright?”

“I said I’m fine,” Asa adamantly repeats. “Don’t worry about me and let’s just focus on finding these people.”

The rest of the ride was filled with tense silence until the team arrived at the forest entrance. There were already officers there since yesterday after a horrific car accident and the brutal decapitation of the unknown driver. There was police tape around the area where the area they were canvasing and directed any traffic that was passing through. Asa and her team went deeper into the woods to look for any signs of where the Hamada’s last were. They eventually found an abandoned campsite and began searching whatever remained.

A couple people were looking through the tent and bags that were left behind while a couple more officers, including Asa, went to look for clues a few feet away from the campsite. Everyone’s eyes were peeled for any form of evidence or lead but were coming up empty. Asa was the most determined to find any leads for any of the cases she was working; there was no way she would let anything get past her.

“Hey guys,” Michiko calls out. “I think I found something over here!”

Asa heads to her direction, joining Nakano and Michiko by a tree a few feet away from the campsite. Once there, Asa notices one half of a rope tied around a tree branch while Michiko held the other half in her hand.

“Looks like a noose,” Michiko states.

“Any blood or anything on it?” Asa asks.

“Not that we can see,” Nakano answers. “But maybe we can bring it back to the lab just in case there is something else on there.”

“Good idea,” Asa agrees. “Somebody grab the other half of that rope so we can bring it back.”

“Hey boss!” Risa calls out. “I think you should come check this out.”

Asa rushes to where Risa was and found her kneeling on the ground, shining a flashlight over a spot of dirt. Asa kneels down to get a closer look to find many sets of footprints all leading away from the campsite.

“I wonder where they were headed,” Asa wonders.

“Who knows? For all we know, this may not even be any of our victims’,” Risa points out.

“Doesn’t matter. It can still lead us closer to finding everyone,” Asa says. “We have two things that could bring us closer to some answers, and we can’t just ignore it.”

Asa whistles to grab the attention of her team, “Alright everyone, we found some possible evidence to give us a lead. Grab whatever else you can so we can head back to the lab.”

Everyone calls back in agreement and begins to pack up their things to leave. Asa heads back to the squad cars when suddenly, a piercing shriek echoes throughout the woods, startling Asa. Her eyes widen in anxiety and she glances at her team, who all seemed to be unbothered by it.

“Did you all hear that?” Asa asks.

“Hear what?” Nakano asks.

Realizing she was the only one who heard the scream, Asa shakes her head and continues walking back to the squad cars. However, another scream sounded.

“Asa, help me!”

Asa’s head whips back for a moment to look at her team, but again, no one seemed to have heard it. Becoming paranoid, she rushes back to the squad cars, trying her best to keep her composure in front of everyone else. She recognized that voice, and it pained her knowing she couldn’t do anything about the scream. At least not at the moment.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asa and Risa return to the lab to submit the evidence found at the crime scene. While waiting for the results, Risa confronts Asa about a secret her superior's been keeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! it's been a looooong time since i've updated this story, but 've decided to continue with it. i want to let you all know that i've edited the previous 11 chapters to hopefully make a bit more sense of the story and to provide a better reading experience. new details have been added, and i highly recommend reading them first. otherwise, here's chapter 12! i hope you all enjoy!

Asa and her team return back to Tokyo and submitted the evidence found at the forest to the lab and was told that any results would be out as soon as possible. Everyone had split up to do their own thing back in the precinct as Asa and Risa stayed behind in the lab and waited for the results. Asa remained silent in her seat as Risa came back to her with a cup of water and a cookie she bought from the vending machine.

“You should probably eat something, boss,” Risa says, handing over the water and cookie to Asa. “You look like you need the energy.”

Asa takes the items from Risa and nods, “Thank you.” She takes a gulp of the water and opens the cookie. “I really hope we can find something off that rope.”

“So do I,” Risa agrees. But her focus was on something more important. “Boss, are you sure you’re alright?”

Asa gives an annoyed groan, “How many times do I have to tell you all? I’m fine. Will you quit asking me that?”

“Well, can you blame anyone for asking you over and over?” Risa turns completely to Asa, giving her a deeply concerned look. “Ever since we found Nozomi’s car, you’ve been acting… I don’t know, strange? Like something’s eating at you.”

“Nothing’s eating at me, Risa,” Asa affirms, taking a bite of her cookie. “I’m just trying to focus on these cases. We need answers, and we’re constantly coming up short. It’s frustrating.”

Risa sits in silence for a moment before asking, “Which case? Nozomi’s, the couple’s… or your sister’s?”

Asa’s eyes widen and unintentionally chokes on the water she was sipping. “What are you talking about?”

“I went to the file room and asked around, wondering what the extra folders you had were for. Later, I find out that you picked up on your sister’s cold case again and have been wanting to ask you about it ever since.”

Asa gives Risa an upset look, “No one told you to go snooping through your superior’s business.”

“What else was I supposed to do, Asa?” Risa asks. Asa knew whenever she called her by name that Risa was serious. “You won’t tell me anything, so I had to find out one way or another.” She places a hand on Asa’s shoulder, “Do you think that all these cases are related to one another?”

Asa tries holding back her tears and nods, “Yes, I do. They’ve all disappeared into those woods and was never seen again since. There’s something about that area that’s really bothering me, and I’m trying to figure out what that is.”

Risa nods in understanding, “Well, there’s no use going at it alone. They say two heads are better than one, right?”

“No, Risa. I don’t want you to get involved in this. I can handle it,” Asa says, standing up throw her trash away.

“Why not?” Risa asks, walking over to her superior. “You’ve been trying to figure out your sister’s disappearance by yourself for the past five years by yourself. Don’t you think it’d be better to put our heads together and solve this? Besides, we could probably figure out the other two cases along the way and find everyone involved.”

Asa wanted to object, but Risa had a valid point. Trying to find her sister was nearly impossible to do by herself, and if Risa was offering the help, there wasn’t any reason to turn it down. “Thank you, Risa. This means a lot to me.”

Risa places her arm around Asa’s shoulders, “No problem, boss. You think the lab found anything yet?”

“Let’s go check.”

The two of them head back inside and headed straight to the DNA analysist who seemed to be headed in their direction as well. “Ah, you two came in just in time. I think I have good news for you both.”

“Good news is better than no news,” Risa says with relief. “What do you have for us?”

The analysist hands the officers a small folder with some documents inside. “Well first, checking out the rope, I could determine that it was cut by some sort of blade. Luckily, there was a bit of blood on the rope, so I checked that out as well. Also, I was able to pull some semblance of fingerprints. There were two sets that I was able to pull off.”

Asa finds the first set of results. “The first set says it’s one of the missing campers, Mr. Hamada. Was the blood on the rope his as well?”

“Indeed it was. But that’s not all,” the analysist adds. “I think you might find the second set of results more to your liking. You see, I was able to pull off another person’s fingerprints, as well as a couple strands of hair. Does the name look familiar?” Both officers take a look and widen their eyes. The second set of results came back as being Nozomi’s DNA.

“No way!” Risa exclaims. “So she might be in those woods after all.”

“I say it’s your best bet,” the analysist agrees. He sees the officers off as the two of them walk back to the precinct.

“Okay so now there’s no doubt that all three of them are in the woods,” Risa reiterates. “Should we do another search, boss?”

“No, not yet,” Asa answers. “There’s still something else we need to figure out.” The two of them head back to the precinct to do some further investigation.

***

Asa and Risa had occupied one of the meeting rooms and let Nakano and Michiko in on the findings of the case so far. They also informed them about the additional case that the two were taking on, and their fellow officers agreed to help in any way they could. But first and foremost, they reviewed the results of the two previous cases.

“Okay,” Asa starts, writing on the whiteboard. “So, we have Mr. Hamada’s blood and fingerprints from the rope, as well as Nozomi’s hair and fingerprints. What could we make from this?”

“Well, personally, I think the possibility of suicide for Nozomi’s case can’t be ruled out quite yet,” Nakano states. “Maybe she hung herself, someone found her body, and cut her down. Whether or not she was successful before that person found her is still up for debate.”

Risa quickly goes through the DNA results before speaking, “Okay, but the rope was cut with a blade that had Mr. Hamada’s blood on it. So the same person who could have found Nozomi possibly could’ve found and done something to the Hamada’s.”

“But it just leads to the same question: where are they?” Michiko asks, frustrated in talking in circles. “We’ve looked all around that campsite and a few feet away. There’s no sight of any of the victims anywhere.”

Asa thinks for a moment, “Maybe we need to search deeper into the forest. There could be hidden places that no one’s seen yet.”

“Wait, is it just going to be the four of us searching?” Nakano asks. “Or are we getting everyone else involved again?”

“No, it’ll be just the four of us,” Asa answers. “Maybe bring one or two more officers for backup. Remember, we’re not only looking for the three previous victims this time around, and I would prefer the other case to be kept secret.”

Michiko looks at her partners and then back to Asa, “Does the chief even know you’re working your sister’s case again?”

“No, he doesn’t.” Asa looks to the floor remembering the last words her superior told her about the subject.

_“It’s been way too long, Matsumoto. There are no signs of her anywhere, and everyone’s ready to call it quits. Maybe it’s time to accept that she’s gone. I’m sorry.”_

Asa clenches her fists in latent anger. She’s noticed that Nozomi’s case had been going on for the same amount of time that Junko’s case did before everyone gave up on her. What made Nozomi so special? Was it simply because she was someone “more important” than a fellow officer’s family member? No one around the precinct seemed ready to give up so easily yet, so why couldn’t they hold on to the same hope for her sister? Asa suppresses her resentment towards her superior for now and refocuses on the current matter at hand.

“We’re not going to worry about that right now,” Asa says. “Right now, we have victims to find. Let’s all get set up tonight and head out in the morning. Sound good?”

The whole team agrees and everyone is dismissed. Risa stayed behind to briefly speak with Asa. “No matter what happens, boss, we’re going to find your sister.”

Asa smiles and places a hand on her partner’s shoulder, “Thank you, Risa.” The two clean up the meeting room and head out to prepare for tomorrow’s search.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fed with all the erratic treatment from Deadly Craw, Nozomi finally snaps back. However, when Deadly Craw storms out, Nozomi makes a shocking discovery about her captor.

The night rolls in and Nozomi wakes up staring at the ceiling, still strapped on the table where Deadly Craw had left her. The restraints were awfully tight and the more she wriggled around, the more uncomfortable they became. She groans in frustration, wondering when the hell she could be freed from the basement. Not a moment too soon, the basement door opens and Deadly Craw makes his way downstairs. His face still sustained the gunshot wound, but he didn’t seem to mind, acting as if it were just a simple scar.  
Nozomi stares at him while he walks towards the alchemist station on the opposite side of the room. She watches as he rummages through the different jars and beakers, seemingly looking for something. Wanting some form of answer, Nozomi decides to break the silence with a question.

  
“Where are the other two people?” Deadly Craw doesn’t pay her any attention the first time, so Nozomi decides to speak louder. “Hey! Where did you put the other people that were here?!” Becoming frustrated with being ignored, she tries a different, harsher approach. “Hey, fuckhead! I know you hear me!”

  
Deadly Craw immediately stops what he was doing and slowly turns his towards Nozomi’s direction. His eyes were still a piercing light blue acting as daggers aimed right at her, ready to kill on the spot. However, he looked exhausted, frustrated, and unwilling to deal with Nozomi’s outbursts any longer. He turns back to his desk and continues looking around for something.

  
Nozomi loudly groans, growing more annoyed by the moment. “Why won’t you talk to me?! You were so talkative before you strapped me down here. What’s the matter, huh? Finally ran out of things to say?”

  
Deadly Craw tries his best to ignore Nozomi’s angry words as she continues on. “Y’know, you’ve been acting all big and bad before. What’s the matter now? Going soft?” She scoffs, “You should’ve just killed me when you had the chance. What’s the point of keeping me alive anyway? It’s not like I can go back to my normal life anymore. You’ve pretty much ruined—”

  
“ENOUGH!”

  
Deadly Craw’s enraged roar echoes throughout the basement. Without a second thought, Nozomi shuts her mouth and begins quivering in fear. She was afraid that she had gone too far with her anger and was now concerned that it may have just costed her life for good. Deadly Craw stays over at his desk, hunched over and holding something in his hand. Nozomi tries to get a glimpse as to what it could have been, but Deadly Craw sets it down and walks over to the table, silently unstrapping Nozomi.

  
When the restraints were completely off, Deadly Craw heads back upstairs, slamming the door behind him. Nozomi was certain that he was going to end her life then and there, but she could tell something was definitely wrong with him. She wasn’t sure if she should follow him immediately, so instead, she heads over to the work station. The desk was covered with different kinds of liquids kept in jars and test tubes. Upon looking more closely at them, she notices that some containers were on the verge of breaking by a simple touch. There was something… ancient about the whole set up.

  
For starters, this work station didn’t seem to have any modern technology. It all looked like something from Medieval times, but most of it was kept in pristine condition. She then notices a few notebooks with an ink well and quill next to them, all of them being worn and tattered. They didn’t look like any kind of books she had seen before, so she investigates further. She carefully flips through a black notebook so as to not damage the pages any further than they already were. It had appeared to be some sort of scientific book explaining the ins and outs of the human body and mind. There were notes jotted on the side of each page; they were written in cursive, so Nozomi had a hard time deciphering what it all said.

  
She looks through a brown notebook that explained things on a more chemical level. Different images of an array of elixirs and components to make them were all inside, and there were notes to those as well. Just reading a few sentences gave Nozomi a headache, so she decided to look through a small, tattered black book. Upon opening it, she becomes startled as something falls out of one of the pages. She picks it up from the floor and realizes that it was the burnt photograph Deadly Craw had been looking at earlier. Nozomi was able to finally get a good look at the photo and examined it carefully.

  
Firstly, it wasn’t so much of a photograph as it was a small painting. It was a painting of a couple, seemingly newlyweds. Judging from the man in the painting, Nozomi figured that it was Deadly Craw. He had the same raven hair, his stature was similar, and she immediately recognized the warm brown eyes. His skin was fair and unblemished, and for the first time, she witnessed Deadly Craw smile. Nozomi definitely couldn’t see it happening now, but there was something charming about it that made Nozomi rethink some of her impressions of him.

  
She then observed the bride. Her hair was shoulder length and a dark brown, similarly styled the same way as Nozomi’s current hairstyle. Her dress was an immaculate white that had unfortunately been damaged by the burns on the paper. Her skin was just as beautiful and her smile was graceful and calming. If Nozomi didn’t know any better, she’d probably think that the bride was her long-lost twin with how much the two looked alike. But there was something about her that Nozomi found strange. She turns the painting around to look at the back, finding the names “Mr. and Mrs. Aoi Shiroyama.” But what surprised Nozomi was the year written next to them: 1579.

  
Looking for more answers, Nozomi goes through the small black book. Inside were a bunch of names and dates with either the words “SUCCESS”, “FAILURE”, or “ESCAPED” written next to them. None of the names rang any bells to Nozomi, and there were numerous amounts of them to look through. She turns to the last few pages and carefully looks through the names. The final name in particular catches her eye and the tension in the room quickly rose.

  
“Nozomi… Shiroyama…” Nozomi couldn’t believe that her own name was inside the book. But that couldn’t have been her, right? She looks for more information and discovers that the date goes all the way back to the early 1600s. What scared Nozomi the most was that the word “ESCAPED” was written in bold next to the name. What could that have meant? An extremely odd hypothesis formed in Nozomi’s mind: did Deadly Craw think that she was the same woman from the painting? Unable to think of an answer herself, she knew she had to confront Deadly Craw—no, Aoi—about it.

  
She brings the books and paintings along with her as she headed upstairs. He wasn’t anywhere to be found inside. She goes outside towards the lake, but he wasn’t there either. “Where the hell is he?” Nozomi wondered to herself. She looked all around the cabin and didn’t find any signs of him anywhere. She ventured out some distance away from the cabin and headed westward. It was a new area of forest that she hadn’t traversed yet, so she wasn’t sure if he could be found here. She continues forward for a bit longer, but halts to the sound of a loud shriek.

  
Nozomi looks around the area, looking for any sign of somebody that could’ve been around. She didn’t see anyone nearby, but the shrieking continued on. Against her better judgement, Nozomi follows where the sound could possibly have been coming from. Travelling a yard or so further, she comes across a shed. It was slightly smaller than the cabin, but still looked a bit spacious like the cabin. She cautiously steps forward towards it when the screams continued on from inside. Nozomi picks up the pace and makes it to the door, finding it ajar. Without hesitation, she enters the shed.

  
The first room was empty and unfurnished. The only thing inside was the lit fireplace providing some warmth in the room. One step inside and Nozomi suddenly squirms as she felt her bare feet step in a thick puddle of something. The lighting in the room wasn’t much for her to see exactly what it was, so she trudges onward. The only other room she could see was smaller than the first. Since the door was open, Nozomi slowly walks inside. She was initially greeted with darkness until she found a light switch. Within moments, the room was fully illuminated and the sight it beheld rendered Nozomi speechless and shocked.

  
There was Deadly Craw standing over the elderly woman from before. She was still alive and terrified of the man that stood before her. She looks towards Nozomi’s direction and pleads for help. “Help me! Please, help me! He’s going to kill me!”

  
Nozomi couldn’t respond upon seeing the woman’s face. The skin around her cheeks were completely torn off and in the hand of Deadly Craw. It was shocking to see the woman still talking. The immense amount of blood spewing from her face was horrific and watching each face muscle move as she pleaded could even frighten the bravest of men. Right beside her was her husband, still cut open and his organs scattered around his body. He was still and lifeless, his empty eyes left wide open and staring straight at Nozomi. She willed herself not to vomit in utter fear as she remains utterly motionless.

  
“What… what are you doing?” she quietly asks her captor.

  
“Why are you just standing there?!” the elderly woman barks, her words slurred and and a bit distorted from the blood she was choking on. “Don’t just stand there, do something! Find help!”

  
“I… I…” Nozomi couldn’t say anything to even remotely help matters. The only words she was able to mutter was a weak and fearful, “I’m so sorry…”

  
Deadly Craw looks back at Nozomi, watching her breaking down at the sight before her. He turns his attention back to the woman and decides to quickly finish the job. He jams his claws straight into the woman’s mutilated face, instantly killing her on the spot. Nozomi tried her best not to fully shut down upon witnessing another murder caused by her negligence. Guilt washed over her like a tidal wave and all she could do was stand there and drown.

  
Deadly Craw, however, removes his hand from the woman’s face and walks over towards Nozomi. Upon approaching her, he notices his belongings in Nozomi’s hands. He immediately wanted to question why they were in her possession, but watching her breaking down seemed to be a more important issue to take care of. He takes Nozomi in his arms, carrying her bridal style, and walks out of the shed and heads back to the cabin.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Upon returning to the cabin, Nozomi officially breaks down and takes her anger out on Deadly Craw. But her demeanor quickly changes when her captor suddenly falls ill.

It didn’t take long for the two of them to make it back to the cabin. Once inside, Deadly Craw gently placed Nozomi down in a corner of the room—from the make-shift bed in said corner, this had to have been where he slept. The moment she’s out of his grasp, Nozomi drops everything and began rocking back and forth, holding herself for comfort. Deadly Craw extends his hand for comfort, but Nozomi smacks it away. His first instinct was to attack her, but it took all of Deadly Craw’s strength to resist the urge. Instead, he simply stood there and watched Nozomi completely break down.

Words could never describe the devastating deterioration of Nozomi’s psyche and morality. The fate of the first man she came across after being brought to this hellhole was out of her control, but that didn’t stop her from feeling guilty for just ignoring his pleas. However, the blame for death of that innocent couple was entirely on Nozomi’s shoulders—at least in her mind, it was. She was the one who lured them into Deadly Craw’s trap, she watched as they were tortured and picked apart like dead animals; she couldn’t even help the woman that she was mere feet away from. And why?

_“YOU’RE WEAK! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A COWARD! AND NOW, HE’S GOING TO KILL YOU NEXT! YOU DESERVE IT, YOU WORHTLESS WHORE!”_

The voice in her head was shouting, deafening everything else around her. Her heart was ready to burst out of her chest, her anxiety was that high. She couldn’t handle it anymore, she couldn’t continue living with the overwhelming feelings of guilt, shame, and hopelessness. Out of nowhere, she springs up and charges towards Deadly Craw. Deadly Craw instinctively drew his arms up to defend himself, but was surprised when he noticed that Nozomi was trying to take his clawed glove off. Nozomi was clawing at him, kicking him, even going as far as throwing in a punch here and there.

Deadly Craw manages to shove her away, but Nozomi immediately went back on the attack. This was a different side of Nozomi that he had ever seen. Something deep inside was telling Deadly Craw to subdue her immediately, but he didn’t. He could see the pain in her tearful eyes, he could hear the hopelessness in her shaking voice, he could feel her anger with every vicious attack. Just the sight of seeing this broken woman completely losing it tore him apart. Bitter memories come flooding in like a tsunami and he realized that enough was enough.

Deadly Craw manages to grab hold of Nozomi, seemingly with ease, and pulls her close into his chest. Nozomi was still trying to fight back, but her confusion of the situation was gradually calming her down to the point where she stopped struggling as much. Deadly Craw continued holding onto Nozomi as tightly as he could, causing her to finally inquire about his actions.

“What are you doing?” He remains silent as he continues to hold her. Nozomi was sick of not getting any answers from him, so she decided a different approach. This time, with a much calmer demeanor than last time.

“What are you doing… Aoi?”

His eyes widen with shock upon hearing his name being said so calmly. His embrace tightens as he buries his face into Nozomi’s neck. She almost wanted to stop him from doing so, but the sound of stifled sobs convinced her otherwise. Nozomi’s stomach drops and her heart breaks upon hearing it. She had no idea what to do. She thought the only emotions that this man could convey were anger, cruelty, and ruthlessness. It was in this moment that Nozomi knew she was no longer dealing with the monster known as Deadly Craw, but instead with the vulnerable human that was Aoi Shiroyama.

Hesitantly, Nozomi completes the embrace and gently rubbed his back to try and comfort him. “Aoi… That’s your name, right?” she whispers.

“Yes,” Aoi quietly replies. “Aoi Shiroyama.”

Nozomi pulls away from the embrace a little bit so she could look Aoi in the eyes. They were the gentle brown she’s only seen a couple times. “My name is… Nozomi.”

Aoi nods, “I know.”

“But I don’t think I’m the Nozomi you’re looking for.”

Aoi heavily sighs, “I know.”

Nozomi’s eyes widen a bit, “How long have you known?”

Aoi slowly lets her go and picks up the small painting off the floor. He looks at it with a sentimental gaze and looks back at Nozomi with the same fondness in his eyes. He holds up the painting to make a side by side comparison as he spoke. “I’ve known… all along…”

The uncanny resemblance between Nozomi and the bride in the photo brought Aoi to tears again, but he tries to maintain his composure. Nozomi looks at him with confusion, “Well, if you knew this whole time… why would you…?” She began thinking back to the very first night she was in this cabin and her mind flashes back to all of the torture, the abuse, the rape; all those memories boiled her blood. “Why would you put me through everything that you have?!”

Aoi stares at her with an apologetic look, “I’m sorry.”

Nozomi scoffs, “You’re sorry? You’re _sorry?!_ Do you really think a pathetic apology like that’s going to fixed everything?!” She storms closer to Aoi, getting up close and personal. “You’ve beaten me until I was black and blue, put my body through all sorts of hell for no reason; you’ve forced me to help you kill two innocent people! And all you can say is you’re _sorry?!_ ”

Aoi appeared to have nothing to say in response and hung his head low, repeating the phrase with his damaged voice. “I’m so sorry.”

Nozomi shakes her head in disbelief, “Even if I was your wife, would you still have treated me this way? Is this why she escaped like it says in your book? You abused and tortured her, making her run away, so you take it out on others?!”

“Her escape… was my… fault,” Aoi states. Nozomi gives him a confused look as he continued on. “I let her… get away. I’ve… betrayed her. But still… I couldn’t bring… myself to… stop.”

Nozomi’s confusion only grew stronger with each word Aoi was able to bring himself to say. “Stop what?”

“I’m… so sorry,” Aoi says, this time clutching his chest. This is the most he’s ever spoken at one time and it was taking an evident toll on his voice and body. “Please… forgive me… Nozomi.”

Suddenly, Aoi collapses onto his knees, still clutching the left side of his chest. Nozomi immediately comes to his aid, trying her best to help. “Aoi? Aoi, what’s the matter?”

“Basement…” Aoi whispers. “Need to…”

Unable to think of anything else to do, Nozomi uses all her strength to help Aoi downstairs to the basement. Once they reached the last step, Aoi points to one of the tables and Nozomi rushes over to help him lie down. Wondering what to do, Nozomi panickily looks around the alchemist’s station, desperately looking for anything that could help. She constantly looked back and forth between the desk and Aoi, making sure he was still conscious. After moments of searching, she finds a half-empty jar of some sort of pills. She was looking for some sort of label and found on the lid the word “aspirin.”

Nozomi rushes back over to Aoi with the jar. She had to get Aoi to chew and swallow the aspirin in case he was having a heart attack, but in order to do that, she had to take off his mask. The damage from being shot in the face was still prominent, but Nozomi had no other choice. She hurriedly tries to find a zipper, latch, anything to get the mask off. Not seeing one immediately, she gingerly tries taking off his coat, but Aoi grabs hold of one of her hands.

“Please… don’t…” he painfully begged.

Nozomi snatches her hand back and continued taking the jacket off. She tosses it on the floor and starts removing his shirt. It was odd to Nozomi that there were a bunch of scorch marks all over the shirt, but she wasn’t focused on it for too long. Unable to take it off the regular way, Nozomi figured she had to cut it off. She removes Aoi’s clawed glove and used it as a blade to tear the shirt down the middle. Aoi’s torso was exposed and it nearly causes Nozomi to scream in terror.

The entirety of his torso was severely burned. There were patches of skin missing in certain spots and charred muscle showing as well. As if the sight of Aoi’s body wasn’t frightening enough, drilled into his collarbones were two small glass vials. Two of the tubes in Aoi’s mask connected to each of them and inside were a very small amount of a bright red liquid. Nozomi searches for more of the vials and finds one attached to each of his arms, except they were fuller than the other ones. She had no idea what to make of this and looked to Aoi for answers.

“What is all this?”

Aoi began violently coughing, but still managed to speak. “Refill… them. On the… desk…” He weakly points over to the alchemist station in the general direction of a rather large jar of the same bright red liquid.

Without hesitation, Nozomi rushes over to the desk and returns to the table. “Alright, what do I do?”

Aoi gestures to the top of the vials, each with a tube attached. He gives a turning motion and Nozomi unscrews one. Analyzing it, she could see that attached to the lid was a small, yet thick syringe. There was a button on the lid, possibly used to suck up the liquid and inject it into the vial. Putting the pieces together, Nozomi gets to work refilling the vials. She made to be extremely cautious given that this was her first time dealing with anything like this in her life. Once she was finished refilling, Nozomi carefully screws the lids back on the vials and waited for Aoi to respond.

A minute or two passes as Aoi’s breathing becomes steadier and his pain seemingly subsiding. It was weird watching him breathe. His skin seemed to have been sticking onto his bones like plastic wrap and his bones were slightly visible. Watching each muscle work as he drew his breaths gave Nozomi the same sickly feeling from before. However, she had to look past it as she continued checking on Aoi’s condition.

She inspects the jar of red liquid and asks, “What is this stuff anyway?”

Aoi groans as replies through labored breaths. “My… creation. It keeps me… alive.”

Nozomi raises her eyebrows, “Wait, what? What is that supposed to mean?”

Aoi holds onto Nozomi’s hand and gently squeezes it. “With this… we can live… forever…”

It took Nozomi a few moments to remember Aoi telling her the same statement sometime ago. “You mean to tell me that the way to live forever… is with this?” Nozomi shakes her head, “What is this? Some sort of immortality potion or something? This is crazy!” She lets go of Aoi’s hand and paces away from the table.

Aoi remained lying down and made a statement that pauses Nozomi in her tracks. “I was born… on the 20th of January… 1539. If you don’t believe me… look in the back… of the… brown book.”

Willing to entertain the notion, Nozomi heads back upstairs to receive the brown notebook. She goes to the back and finds a loose piece of paper nearly falling out. She catches it before it does so and reads it. Shock appears on her face as she carefully reads what looked like a birth certificate. Written at the top: “Name: Shiroyama, Aoi. Weight: 6.8lbs. Sex: Male. Date of Birth: Wednesday 20 January, 1539. Time of Birth: 03:42 AM.” The names of the doctor and his parents were smudged.

The document looked too old to be forged, so there was no doubt that this was a real birth certificate. “He really has lived forever…” Nozomi whispers to herself. Just the sheer thought of some red liquid keeping a man alive for nearly 500 years was mind-boggling, but what could she refute it with? She heads back downstairs, grabbing the rest of Aoi’s belongings before doing so, and places them back onto the desk. She stares at the birth certificate some more before walking back over to Aoi.

Once she was near him, she quietly asks, “Who… _what_ are you?”

Aoi looks up to her with his gentle brown eyes and simply says, “I… am living proof.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morning comes and Asa heads down to the precinct with more questions than answers regarding her missing sister's case.

At the crack of dawn, Asa rises from bed and heads for the shower to get ready for today’s search. In her mind, this was no longer about finding the campers or Nozomi; all she wanted to do was find out the truth about Junko. There couldn’t be a coincidence that every victim went missing in the same forest. She spent most of her time in the shower trying to come up with some sort of connection, but the location was the only thing in common. However, there was something about Junko’s case that seemed to be different.

“Deadly Craw…” Asa thinks aloud. She didn’t want to believe in such a ridiculous urban legend, but the description and M.O. that Risa described the other day doesn’t fit into the other two cases. That is until she suddenly remembers an evidence photo in Nozomi’s case. She hurriedly ends her shower, gets dressed, and reviews the files more carefully this go around. She distinctly remembers seeing a vaguely familiar figure standing by the scene where Nozomi’s car had crashed. She finds the photo but couldn’t believe her eyes upon looking at it.

 _“Wait, where the hell is he?”_ Asa wonders. The ominous figure was no longer in the photo. _“But I swear he was in this picture!”_ Confusion and anger fills Asa mind. Could she have imagined the man standing there staring at her? _“He’s toying with me…”_ Asa frustratedly gathers her belongings and heads to the police station, hoping to make sense of the situation on the way.

***

The sun had fully risen once Asa had arrived, and almost immediately tackled by an excited Risa. “Boss, you’re never going to believe this!” Without explaining anything, Risa grabs Asa by the wrist and rushes to the meeting room where Nakano and Michiko were eagerly waiting in front of a television.

“What’s going on?” Asa finally asks, pulling away from Risa.

“What’s going on is that we may have just gotten our biggest lead yet!” Risa exclaims. She picks up the remote and rewinds the video.

In the video was the random driver who was decapitated on the roadside near the forest. Apparently, the crime lab had found a dash cam recording the man driving through Shizuoka. There was nothing out of the ordinary so far, but that quickly changed. The camera had captured a woman frantically running from a mysterious looking man. Risa pauses the video where a clear view of the woman was on screen.

“Is that…?” Asa couldn’t believe her eyes upon seeing an extremely distressed Nozomi alive and running away from her possible captor.

“You bet your ass it is, boss!” Risa couldn’t contain her excitement for this new breakthrough in the case. She continues the video to show another huge lead.

Nozomi had stopped dead in her tracks upon noticing the incoming car, but the man chasing her had ran past and shockingly shoulder-checked the truck, crashing straight into him. Asa lets out an audible gasp watching the man seemingly unfazed by the impact of the crash. Nozomi is seen paralyzed in fear as the man steps away from the front of the truck towards the driver, but Risa pauses the video again when the man is fully facing the camera. The man’s appearance was horrific to say the least: his wild raven hair partially concealing his piercing light blue eyes, the ragged outfit he wore bearing small tears and holes throughout, the odd and broken gas mask on his face, and the large, bloodied steel claw on his left hand.

“It’s him,” she mutters to herself, immediately recognizing him.

“What’s that?” Risa asks.

“It’s him,” Asa speaks up. “The man that took my sister. I-it’s him!”

Everyone’s eyes widen at the discovery. Risa was the first to address it, “Oh my God, the Deadly Craw kidnapped your sister?!”

“Risa, please!” Michiko snapped at her. “Now’s not the time for your urban legend bullshit.”

“But, look!” Risa gestures and points at the screen. “The clawed hand gives it away, doesn’t it?! What normal person carries around something like that? What normal _human being_ is able to withstand a two-ton truck crashing into the side of his body, and act like it’s nothing?! You can’t sit there and tell me that what I’m saying is bullshit now!”

The room grows silent after Risa calms down. No one had anything to say to refute the bizarre, yet sensible, point she brought up. Michiko looks towards Asa, “Are you sure this is the man who took your sister?”

Tears begin silently streaming down Asa’s cheeks. “You never forget the face of someone who’s taken your loved one. I’m more than sure that he’s the one who’s taken Junko away from me.”

Michiko looks towards Nakano, who as been silent the whole time. Then he says, “Well, now we have our suspect. And we have evidence that Nozomi might be alive after all. So, what are we waiting for? We should head out, yeah?”

Everyone nods in agreement and packs up to head out for the search. However, before the group could leave, they’re stopped by Chief Officer Ueda. “Matsumoto. Where are you all headed?”

“We’re heading back to the crime scene where Nozomi disappeared,” Asa answers.

Chief Ueda presses his lips, “Is that all the four of you are going to do?”

Asa gives a worried look to her team and then back to her superior. “Yes, sir. We’ve found new evidence that could help solve our case.”

“Which case? Nozomi’s or your sister’s?”

Asa’s stomach drops and fiercely looks towards Risa, who quickly gave a non-verbal denial of telling their boss. Asa looks back at Chief Ueda with nervous eyes. “Sir, I can explain…”

“Yes, please explain why you’ve decided to work a case that wasn’t assigned to you, unauthorized might I add.” Chief Ueda was stern with his tone and that only spelled trouble for the group. “Is it all of a sudden policy to go behind your superior’s back and reopen a case thinking he wouldn’t find out sooner or later?”

Asa hangs her head and remains silent as Chief Ueda continues. “You’re lucky I don’t fire you all on the spot. If this happens again, I’ll have to reconsider that decision.” He takes the files from Asa’s hands, “Now, I think all four of you should stay back and reflect upon your actions while I find someone else to continue this investigation.”

Without saying another word, Chief Ueda sharply turns away and heads to his office, slamming the door behind him. Risa, Michiko, and Nakano all gather around Asa, who was visibly shaking with anger. Risa tries to place her arm around her, but Asa shoves her away and storms to Chief Ueda’s office.

“Asa, what are you doing?!” Risa asks, quickly following behind her partner.

Asa slams the door open and begins her outburst towards her boss. “Why is it that you don’t want me to look for my sister, huh?! Why is _this_ case so much more important?! What makes that woman worth more than a _fellow officer’s own family?!_ My sister was only fifteen when she was kidnapped. _Fifteen!”_

Asa’s voice was trembling, and it was hard for her to speak when she’s on the verge of tears. “You’ve said it yourself: the chances of a victim’s survival drastically decrease, and for all we knew, she could’ve died _days_ ago. But you’ve held on to hope for so long; where was that same hope five years ago, huh? Was it not there because she wasn’t _important_ enough? She wasn’t _famous_ enough? Hell, everyone quickly gave up on the elderly couple that went missing around the same time she did.”

Her composure was no longer maintained, and Asa let her superior have it. “But no, our focus should be on a rich woman whose status is the only reason we’re looking for her. She’s Tokyo’s Sweetheart, right? Well your _‘sweetheart’_ has become my worst nightmare and I’m sick of it!”

The entire precinct goes silent as Asa was shouting. Jaws were dropped, curious whispers were happening, and her teammates were beside themselves upon seeing their usual calm and collected superior lose her temper towards the Chief Officer of all people. The silence was deafening and the tension in the air was thick enough to be cut with a knife. All Chief Ueda did was stare directly into Asa’s reddening eyes for what seemed like minutes before standing up and moving from behind his desk. He never broke eye contact as he simply holds out his hand.

“Give me your badge and gun,” he orders. There were many gasps upon hearing the words escape his lips.

Asa stares directly into Chief Ueda with enraged, tearful eyes as she rips the badge off her police jacket and removes her gun from its holster, handing both to her now ex-superior. She takes off her jacket and shoves that into his hands as well, then says in a rage-filled voice. “If I can’t even trust people who were supposed to be my brothers in arms, then I’ll handle this case myself.”

Without another word, Asa turns around and leaves the precinct. Risa and the rest never had a chance to respond to what had just happened when Chief Ueda simply states his final words on the matter. “Everyone back to work. We need continue with this case.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nozomi wakes up the following morning, feeling the need to reflect upon the events from the previous night.

_“I’m living proof…”_

The phrase echoed in Nozomi’s head the entire night, making her unable to sleep. She thought that for the first time she could sleep easily since she didn’t sleep on the concrete floor in the basement last night. Instead, she slept in Deadly Craw—no, she couldn’t call him that any longer— _Aoi’s_ make-shift bed upstairs. Because he wasn’t upstairs when she woke up, she assumed he remained lying on the table. The events of the previous night kept replaying in Nozomi’s mind as if it were a movie put on loop. The death of the elderly couple, Aoi’s sudden decline of health, the discovery of his true age; surely this was something that came from some sort of horror novel.

Nevertheless, she sits up and examines the room. It was the first time she’d been upstairs for more than mere minutes, and she was able to examine it thoroughly. The inside was just as run-down as the exterior: wooden walls splintering in certain spots, half-assed attempts to cover holes in the ceiling with some sort of black substance—possibly tar—and the room wasn’t the cleanest. Something did intrigue Nozomi though: the fireplace. She had never noticed it before, but since there was wood burning inside it, it’d be hard not to. With no recollection of lighting a fire, she figured Aoi had started it to warm the room. It was nearing mid-October, so the autumn weather wasn’t as forgiving as last month.

Next to the fireplace was a large, rustic looking cauldron. At first, Nozomi was afraid to look inside it, wishing that it wasn’t what she thought it could be, but was relieved to see it was empty. There was no strange odor to it, so hopefully that meant it was safe for her to use. She picks it up and takes it outside to fill it with water from the lake. Rushing back in, she sets the cauldron down in the middle of the room. She had been wearing the same set of clothes for what felt like eternity, so she wanted to have a way to wash them. Before she could do so, Nozomi was curious to know what her captor was up to, so she heads to the basement to find out. Surprisingly, Aoi was up and had much more energy than last night. He was walking around and working at his station of sorts. There was a bit of reluctance at first, but Nozomi felt it was best to be the first to break the silence.

“Good morning.”

Aoi’s head whips around at her direction. His warm brown eyes met with hers as he simply nods to greet her before returning to his work. Nozomi slowly descends down the stairs and makes her way towards him. There no longer was any predicting how Aoi would act towards Nozomi. It seemed as if one moment he’s ready to tear her to shreds, but in the next moment he completely becomes vulnerable around her. No matter the case, Nozomi concluded that Aoi obviously has some mental issues. Nevertheless, she still calmly approached him.

“How are you feeling?” she asks, taking a seat on the nearest table.

Aoi pauses his work and looks towards her. At first, he remains silent for a bit, but finally answers the question. “I’m feeling… many things…”

Hearing his raspy voice sent a pang within Nozomi’s heart. After discovering the severe burns Aoi had suffered, there was no doubt that there was serious damage done to the inside as well as the outside. Her mind flashes back to last night where he couldn’t even form a full sentence without coughing and struggling to breathe. From what she figured, Aoi’s “creation” is what keeps his centuries-old body running.

“Many things like what?” Aoi’s face becomes downcast and he begins working again, ignoring Nozomi’s question. “What? You don’t want to tell me?”

“Why do you… care?”

The sudden question surprises her. “I can’t be concerned about you after what happened last night?”

Aoi replies with a bit of a strained voice, “It’s hard… to believe… you would be… after all I’ve… done to you.”

There was obviously something wrong with Aoi, but Nozomi didn’t want to continue pressing the matter if he wasn’t up for it. But he did make a valid point: why _does_ she care all of a sudden? He’s done nothing but torture and violate her for days, most instances to the point of possible death. There’s still nothing but hatred and resentment in Nozomi’s heart, but after last night…

“Well,” Nozomi began saying, “I mean… last night was pretty crazy, don’t you think? Is it wrong to care for someone who could’ve possibly died?”

Aoi pauses his work once again and gave Nozomi a stern look, “Did you want me… to live?”

There was a moment of Nozomi muttering to herself before she answered. “It’s not like I _wanted_ you to live—or die for that matter. But seeing you like that… scared me, I guess.”

In that moment, Aoi fully turns towards Nozomi, giving her his undivided attention. “Then what do you want?”

“I don’t want anything,” she quietly responds. “I mean… I don’t know what I want anymore! These past few days, I’ve been struggling to keep myself together and I’m constantly worried if I’m going to live to see the next day or not.” She springs up and gets in Aoi’s face, “What do _you_ want, Aoi? What do you want with me?”

Aoi stoically answers, “I want you… to live… forever…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nozomi counters, her emotions running high once again. “You’ve nearly killed me on multiple occasions and you tell me you want me to live forever? It’s hard to believe your words when your actions tell me something different!”

A wave of guilt began drowning Aoi and it showed in his eyes. He remained silent for a moment before responding. “What I’ve done… is unforgivable. However… it all has… a purpose.”

“And that purpose is?”

Aoi takes one of his notebooks and flips through its pages. After a moment or two, he hands Nozomi the notebook for her to look at. She reads what’s on the page and her jaw slightly drops. Inside the book were the dates of the days she’s been in the cabin. The most recent date being October 21 with nothing written next to it. Doing some thinking, she figured it was today’s date. With some more thinking, her eyes widen as Nozomi came to realize that she’s been in this cabin for nearly 10 days. She stares at Aoi for a second but went back to reading the notes.

_“Oct. 12: Found woman near road. Early 20s, minor injuries sustained. Previous scars on both arms, most likely from blade. Resistant, but manageable.”_

_“Oct 14: Subject seems to suffer from anxiety disorder. Wounds sustained from night one still evident (TREATED – SUCCESS). Subject’s body rejects consumption of last subject’s contents. Placed subject in calm environment (drastic change in behavior).”_

_“Oct 19: Subject attempted suicide via asphyxiation. Depressive disorders now evident. Subject now contained for further analysis. (IT HAPPENED AGAIN!!!)”_

The wording was overwhelming and confusing for Nozomi to wrap her head around. “What does all of this mean?” she asks Aoi. “What do you mean _‘subject’?_ What is going on?”

Aoi takes the notebook back, placing it back on the desk. He gives Nozomi a sincere look before quietly saying, “When I found you… I thought… I was given… a second chance.”

Nozomi’s confusion grew stronger, “A second chance at what? Does this have something with me looking like your wife?”

He simply nods. “I ran tests… I wanted to prove… to the church… that immortality was… achievable.”

The more he spoke, the more bewildered Nozomi became. None of what he was telling her made sense in her mind, and the fact that she couldn’t understand frustrated her. “Okay, so… you ran tests on all these people. Including your wife?”

Aoi nods and takes a deep breath before answering. “She was my first… subject. However… her body… rejected all my elixirs. I promised to stop… but I was so close… to achieving my goal. She ran to the church… and they stopped… my experiments…”

Given the context, Nozomi was beginning to piece the situation together. “So when you wrote that she ‘escaped’, did you mean you let her go to the church?”

“The church…” Aoi says, his hoarse voice cracking a bit, “was her only… way to find… peace.” There was a tear falling from his brown eyes, but he didn’t bother wiping it away.

“So you gave her a chance to get away from you,” Nozomi quietly says. “You didn’t want to stop your experiments, but you didn’t want to continue hurting her. Am I getting that right?” Nozomi brings her hand to Aoi’s face and gently wipes his falling tears.

Aoi nods, “I was… angry. But… I understood why. She passed away… days later. The church wouldn’t let me… attend her funeral. I was condemned… and blamed for her death.”

“Is that why you’re so violent?”

“Yes. They called me… crazy. A monster… They told me… that I’d die a… painful death.” Aoi bitter chuckles, “But… here I am.” He looked directly into Nozomi’s eyes and took her hand into his, gripping it tightly. “But what I’ve done… to you… I can never forgive myself for it. I used you… as a pawn… just like I’ve done with her…”

Nozomi could feel her heart slowly breaking. Now she understood more of Aoi’s story and reasons, but that could never reverse all the hell he had put her through. She wasn’t about to forgive him anytime soon, but having the explanation put Aoi in somewhat of a new light.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she begins to say. “I honestly don’t know what else to say about that matter. But what I will say is this: you’re only going to suffer more in a life with immortality than allowing yourself to pass. How does any of what you’ve done to me or the others help you or your wife? All you’re doing is causing pain to you _‘subjects’_ and yourself.”

Nozomi takes her hand back and slowly turns away from Aoi, ready to head back upstairs. However, Aoi grabs her by the shoulder and turns her back around to face him. There was a sincerity in his eyes that even Nozomi couldn’t deny. His eyes were beginning to redden from the tears streaming down his cheeks. He lets go of her shoulder and gradually brings it up to his mask.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Nozomi asks, unaware of what he was about to do.

As soon as the last word escapes her lips, Aoi pulls the mask away from his face, slowly taking it off. As Nozomi had seen before, the top half of his face was flawless, but the bottom half wasn’t as such. The skin was still there, albeit a bit charred. Upon a closer look, there were stitches seemingly holding the skin in place to keep it connected with the top half. It looked somewhat healed—slowly beginning to kind of match the skin of the upper half, but the scars remained to be a permanent feature.

The initial shock finally subsides and Nozomi’s nerves begin to settle down. Aoi remained silent as he allows her to examine him closely. She looked like a child staring at a fascinating exhibit at a museum, hesitating to touch the sight before her. Aoi takes her hand and places it on his cheek, allowing her to feel the texture for herself. Now that she was given permission, Nozomi begins feeling his face with both her hands, confused, yet amazed by what she was witnessing.

“How…?” she thoughtlessly asked.

“This is why… I continue…” Aoi said through shallow breaths.

Hearing Aoi’s voice clearly sent chills down Nozomi’s spine. It was always muffled because of the mask, but hearing him without it was… shocking, to say the least.

“I don’t want to die… I can’t die now… I’m so… close…” He cups Nozomi’s face in his hands, “But… I won’t let you suffer… anymore.”

He presses his forehead against hers and closes his eyes for a moment. Nozomi could feel him quivering; 500 years of pent up resentment, stress, and guilt was being let go in a matter of moments. His tear-filled eyes met hers, and with a painful sincerity in his voice, he mutters one last word to her.

“Go.”

The very sight of this seemingly broken man had Nozomi in tears herself. She could see the pain in Aoi’s eyes, hear it in his damaged voice, and felt a bit of it herself. In the back of her mind, she refused to believe that he was going to let her go so easily. But deep down, there was a hint of belief and she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Aoi takes his jacket and places it over Nozomi’s smaller frame. As soon as she pulls away, Nozomi watches as Aoi puts his mask back on and his breathing becoming normal again. There was nothing left to say, nothing left to do. The only thing Nozomi thought to do was leave.

For what seemed to be the very last time, Nozomi ascends up the stairs, closing the basement door behind her. She reaches the front door, huddles inside the jacket that was gifted to her, and slowly walks out of the cabin. Her pace picked up the farther she went away from the cabin, and without taking another look back, Nozomi makes her way back to the roadside of the Shizuoka forest.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With her newfound freedom, Nozomi makes the long journey back to Tokyo.

Time passes like mere seconds as the sun was beginning to set. Nozomi’s journey back to Tokyo was a long, exhausting one. Her legs were in immense pain from all the non-stop walking southbound back to the city. She didn’t want to stop until she was safe in her apartment again. There were no inns, no rest stops, no cars passing by; the only thing Nozomi was surrounded by were the vast trees and forestry. The trees all looked the same, so much that she was sure she was just walking in complete circles for hours upon hours.

Her heart began pounding due to the strain her body was taking on the journey. There have been plenty of moments where her legs were mere moments from giving out, but she stubbornly ignores the pain and trudges on. What made matters worse was the autumn winds blowing against her, the cold air causing her to move slower than she’d like. But despite the obvious signs for her to stop showing, Nozomi pays them no attention and continues on. She holds the gifted jacket closed, puts her head down, and walks forward.

The road was desolate; no signs of any vehicles going to or from their destinations for a long time until finally, the sound of a large truck was creeping in from behind Nozomi. She turns to look for a brief moment and notices the white semi-truck making its way down the road. She turns forward and kept walking, picking up the pace as much as her tired body would allow her. The sounds of the truck slowing down startles her, causing her to temporarily freeze. The truck pulls over and the driver rolls down the window.

“Hey, lady.” A rugged looking middle-aged man leans out his window to greet her. “Lady, what do you think you’re doing? Why are you walking in the middle of the road?”

Afraid of being recognized, Nozomi lifts the collar of her jacket and spoke in a register a bit higher than her normal voice. “I… I… I got into a car accident.”

The trucker looks at her in shock, “Car accident? Are you alright?”

Nozomi nods, “I’ll be fine. I just have to get back into town.”

“Where are you from, lady?”

Nozomi’s stomach turned. She had no idea who this man was or what his intentions were. “I only live a few hours from here. I’ll be alright.”

“Are you sure?” the trucker suspiciously asks. “You just said you got into a car accident. Don’t you think you should go to the hospital or something?”

“I said I’m fine!” Nozomi snaps. “Now, will you leave me alone?” She shoos the trucker and walks away.

The man turns off the truck and hops out. He marched over towards Nozomi, holding out his hand. “C’mon, lady. You clearly need some help.”

Nozomi fiercely smacks his hand away. “I don’t need your help! I told you I’m fine! Leave me alone!”

It hadn’t occurred to Nozomi that she had completely dropped her façade and spoke in her regular voice, all while giving the trucker a clear view of her face. “Oh my God, you’re that missing girl, right? That Nozomi lady?”

Her eyes widen as she begins realizing her mistake. Against her better judgement, Nozomi bolts forward and tries to get away from the trucker. Unfortunately, the random burst of energy runs short as her legs finally gave out, causing her to fall face first onto the asphalt. The trucker catches up to her and helps her off the ground.

“You have to come back to Tokyo! People have been looking for you everywhere!”

“They have?” Nozomi surprisingly asks. After all this time, she figured that they would have given up by now.

“Yes. It just so happens that’s where I’m headed. Please, let me give you a ride. Everyone will be so happy to finally see you again.”

The trucker goes back to the semi and opens the passenger door, waiting for Nozomi to get in. In any normal case, this would have been Nozomi’s worst nightmare. However, with her body obviously pained and exhausted, she didn’t want to cause any further damage and accepts the offer. The trucker helps her inside and enters the vehicle himself moments later. Once they were both strapped in, he starts up the truck and continues his drive back to Tokyo.

“Do you need me to take you to the hospital anyway?” the trucker asks. “After all, you said you’ve been in a car accident.”

Nozomi didn’t want to deal with any more people than she had to. “I’m alright. I just need to be taken back home.”

“If you say so. Hey, if you don’t mind, I actually have to drop this truck off at the next rest stop. My pickup’s already there, so we can continue heading home from there.”

Nozomi simply nods and turns to face out the window. She wasn’t in much of a good mood to talk and just wanted to be taken home as soon as she possibly could. The rest of the ride remains silent from then on out.

***

Since she was no longer moving on her own accord, Nozomi eventually falls asleep in the truck, giving her body the rest it deserved. Her slumber was far from pleasant, however, and nightmares ran rampant throughout her mind. Her memory flashes back to the first couple days that she was imprisoned at the cabin. For the most part, all she was to Aoi was a simple pawn, a mere guinea pig for all his experiments. Even until the very end, she felt less… human than she was before the whole fiasco.

Her life flashes before her very eyes; growing up in a simple town in the States with her mother and three siblings. There was nothing but love, support, and care in her family. She begins to regret not speaking with them as often as she should have. She wondered if her family knew that she had been gone; it’s not like Nozomi was just popular in Tokyo. Surely fans all over the world has heard about her disappearance. But that notion washes away and a wave of immense helplessness begins to drown her.

She thought that she had her life all figured out after her multiple visits to mental hospitals, inpatient and outpatient. She made sure to take her medications, she made sure those close to her would never let anything happen to her. But all of those precautions seem to be a waste now. Had she have known that her anxious, difficult nature would get her into something as dangerous as this, she definitely would’ve taken that train to Osaka. But there was no use beating herself up about it now. The time for guilt and pity was over. She didn’t have the energy to show either one anyway.

Nozomi manages to open her heavy eyelids and catch a glimpse of the starry night sky. The only other time she had seen it was her first time at the lake. Even now, the stars still had a calming effect over her. Tears well up in her tired eyes, wishing she could experience her time at the lake once more. It seemingly washed all her worries away, filled her with a sense of serenity, and gave her time to feel… human.

However, her peaceful moment was abruptly put to an end when the trucker begins messing around with the radio. It was static for the most part, but finally, he manages to find a station that was comprehensible. There was a short jingle that played before the CM spoke.

_“Alright, welcome back everybody! We’re at the top of the midnight hour here, and before we continue with our program, I’d like to have a moment of silence.”_

Nozomi shifted around to get to a more comfortable position. The trucker notices her movements and chuckles. “Well hello, sleeping beauty. We’re almost at the rest stop. Shouldn’t be too long now.” Just as he finishes his sentence, the CM continues on.

_“Today officially marks the 10 th day of Nozomi Yoshimura’s disappearance. Officers have informed us that lead detective, Asa Matsumoto, is no longer working on the case. Instead her partner, Risa Tanaka, will now lead the case. Both police departments from Tokyo and Osaka urge their citizens to report any information to the authorities. Any and all leads are crucial for her return. The reward for Nozomi’s return still stands at _ _￥_ _50,000,000.”_

“What?!” Nozomi suddenly shouts.

“Yeah, the police offered the reward a few days ago,” the trucker explains. “It’s a good thing that I found you, huh?”

As the trucker casually laughs, Nozomi’s blood began boiling over. Nozomi was never one to boast about her self-worth, but the thought of offering a monetary incentive for people to look for her didn’t sit well with her. People should’ve been looking for her because of genuine concern, not for the promise of money. The fact that the trucker was so nonchalant about mentioning it didn’t make Nozomi any more comfortable. Now she was regretting stepping foot into the truck. The CM finally closes out this pathetic “moment of silence.”

_“In honor of wishing Nozomi’s return, we’re going to kick things off from one of her hit singles, ‘No Longer Me.’ We’ll be back, folks. Stick around.”_

Nozomi’s eyes widened as the name of the song rang through her ears. If there was one song that she was proud of, it was definitely “No Longer Me.” The song begins with a faint, melancholic melody immediately followed by Nozomi’s gentle vocals.

_“What can I say? I feel different from before. I’m not the same. Don’t even know who I am anymore.”_

Shudders run down Nozomi’s spine upon hearing her own voice. Surely that couldn’t be the same person, right? She’s performed that song on numerous occasions, but now it was hard to even consider imagining that the woman she was now was capable of such a thing.

As the second line begins, violins begin to play along with the piano, adding that extra element of sadness. A pit begins forming in Nozomi’s stomach as her mind flashes back to the day she performed the song onstage for the first time. The spotlight was on her, her black sequined dress sparkles as her skilled fingers played the melody on the piano. The microphone was close to her ruby red lips as she enchanted the audience with her performance.

_“Tore down the pictures on the wall and shattered every mirror. Stumbling and tripping down the hall, but now I can see clearer… I’m no longer me…”_

The sound of her bandmates’ instruments begins to take over the melody with the piano and violins still playing along. Nozomi eyes darted around the stage, making eye contact with the band, watching their beaming smiles grow across their faces. She looks over to the audience and they all cheer and roar for Nozomi. The lights in their eyes brought a smile to Nozomi’s face, but then she remembers why she had written the song in the first place.

_“There’s nothing left to say. Put up all façades and walls, put the fake me out on display. And I can’t go back again. Just an empty shell, inhuman; a woman who’s been broken…”_

Even more memories flood her mind as Nozomi recalls the long, exhausting, sleepless nights she had to endure that the song was as perfect as she wanted to be. Crumpled and torn paper all over the bed and floor and a small, bloodied razor blade on the nightstand. The cuts on her arms were minor, but the blood trickles down and would sometimes stain the paper she was writing on, upsetting her and forcing her to start over. If it wasn’t the blood that ruined it, it was her tears. More than often, she would have to write all the songs that have gotten her this far in life through heavily teary eyes, and the toll it took on her was obvious.

But no matter how hard she cried or how much she bled, when it came down to begin recording and promoting her music, she was forced to forget all those tiring, painful nights and puts on a brave face for her fans. No one could ever know what was going on behind closed doors, no one could ever catch a glimpse of what it really took to entertain millions of people every single day. The same speech her manager would say to her before every performance begin ringing in her mind.

_“C’mon now, quit being so dramatic! We all have a job to do, and you need to start picking up the slack! Wash your face, put on a smile, and sing!”_

She would hope that seeing crowds upon crowds of people enjoying her performances would fill her with a sense of accomplishment, but all it did was tighten the chains that bound her to this miserable lifestyle.

_“I’ll keep on smiling, laughing, just for all of you to see. While I’m here crying, dying, losing sight of who to be… But I’m no longer me…”_

If there were ever a time where that very lyric rang loud and true, it would definitely be now. However, she didn’t have a moment to think on it as the truck comes to a complete stop. The trucker turns off the car and looks over to Nozomi before exiting his vehicle.

“My pickup’s this way.” The trucker hands her the keys. “You can go ahead and get in. I’m going to the bathroom, might grab some snacks too. I’ll be right back.”

After walking her to the black pickup truck, the man heads inside the convenient store. Nozomi gets inside and starts the car, immediately turning on the heat. She holds her jacket closed and snuggles into it. She still couldn’t believe she had this sort of memento from her former captor. It was way too big for her, but she didn’t mind it much. Now that she was alone, Nozomi took the opportunity to go through its pockets. There was nothing out of the ordinary at first, but the moment she places her hand in the left pocket, Nozomi shouts in pain. She takes her hand out to find a cut on her palm. Going inside more cautiously, Nozomi pulls out a twisted blade.

She had never seen anything like it before and just looking at it intimidated her. The blade itself was coiled around and judging from the cut on Nozomi’s hand, it was extremely sharp. Her morbid curiosity got the better of her and Nozomi held the blade at her arm, slowly dragging the knife down. She winces in immense pain, but it didn’t last long. She was used to the touch of a cold blade against her skin. Even a nick from this blade was dangerous. But the question in her mind was: why did Aoi leave this in the pocket? Maybe he figured if he set her free that she would find it and allow her to end her life. Or maybe he gifted it to her for protective reasons. She couldn’t wrap her mind around it, but more ideas started forming inside her head.

Her anxiety was beginning to rile up and thoughts flooded Nozomi’s mind. Recalling the torture, the abuse, the rape, and to add insult to injury, the discovery of a monetary reward for her return. Resentment was beginning to form within her—years after years of forcing herself to remain living just for the entertainment of others. She had come to realize that in mere hours, she would have to return to that hellish lifestyle. More tear-filled sleepless nights, more draining recording sessions and television appearances. At least when she was back at the cabin, there was a moment of reprieve from that side of things.

Eventually, even Aoi was beginning to show some semblance of compassion towards her. All he wanted was for her to live as long as his experiments could last. He prevented her from killing herself because he saw value in her life—or at least that’s what Nozomi began to think.

“What the hell am I doing?” Nozomi wondered aloud. “Why… why am I doing this?”

In that moment, Nozomi had her own epiphany: despite all the hell she had gone through with him, it would seem that her life was valued more by Aoi than everyone else back in Tokyo. One half of her brain was trying to convince her that where she was heading was completely irrational, but the other half pushed on to find some sort of justification for its way of thinking. Nevertheless, Nozomi’s mind was practically made up. She stares down at the knife and nods to herself, completely convinced she was about to make the right choice.

She was no longer willing to be constantly put up on display for the sake of entertaining those that replaced her value and self-worth with record deals and a healthy cash flow. She was done dealing with her producers, bandmates, manager, and the millions of people who only wanted her back just so she could continue to be their dancing monkey. She had to go back to the forest, she had to go back to the cabin; she wanted to return to her captor.

Not wasting any more time, Nozomi clutches the knife and hops out of the car. She stalks her way to the convenience store but momentarily pauses upon seeing the cashier at the register. She immediately began getting cold feet, but there was a voice growing in volume yelling at her.

_“You can’t turn back now. You’re already here. Just go in and do it!”_

She settles down a bit before heading inside. Immediately, the cashier greets her. “Good evening, ma’am.”

Nozomi didn’t say a word. All she did was stare the cashier down with her cold, desperate eyes, her grip on the knife even tighter than before. The cashier gave her a puzzled look at first, but the moment she saw the knife, she began to panic.

“H-hey, what are you doing with that?! Stay back!”

In an instant, Nozomi lunges over the counter and backed the cashier into the rack of cigarettes, holding the knife to her neck. She whispers, “You’re going to stay quiet while I handle some things here, understand? Say one word and I’ll fucking kill you.”

The cashier frantically nods, trying to stifle her sobs. Nozomi backs away from her and points to the register. “Open it.”

Without hesitation, the cashier does as she’s told and opens the register. There wasn’t much money inside it, but enough to buy a decent amount of items for what she needed to do. Nozomi grabs all the money she could and stuffs it into her jacker pockets. She looks all around the store and spots items of interest that she needed for her plans.

“I want you to take every gas can and water bottle and put it in the trunk of that pickup over there. Now.”

The frightened cashier wasted no time obeying Nozomi’s orders. She rushes from behind the counter and begins grabbing the items she was told, taking them to the truck. As the cashier was occupied, another thought popped in Nozomi’s mind. She already had the truck to herself, but something had to be done to the now previous owner of the vehicle. Without question, Nozomi knew what she had to do and makes her way to the bathroom.

Her mind flashes back to seeing Aoi stalk his victims. She made sure to imitate his calculated movements, doing her best not to make a sound. Once arriving to the men’s bathroom, Nozomi slowly opens the door, creeping her way inside. The fluorescent lights were dim and flickering, but it didn’t hinder her sight. Ignoring the foul smells coming from the stalls, Nozomi looked at the floor to see any feet that could be in them.

Once she saw the trucker’s feet, she stood in front of his stall door. Moments later, the toilet flushes and Nozomi holds the knife with a vice-like grip. The door opens, and before the trucker could even tell what was happening, Nozomi jams the knife in the jugular. She backs him into the stall and pushes the knife deeper and deeper into his neck, twisting and turning it in the same direction as the coil. The trucker’s would be screams turned into more like gurgles of pure agony as he was beginning to choke on his own blood.

Nozomi stared into his eyes, watching the life fade out of them. The trucker’s gurgles and chokes began to slow until they eventually stopped. His body twitches a bit before becoming still, confirming that he was no longer alive. Nozomi yanks the knife from his neck, blood splattering onto the walls as well as her body and face. She immediately pats down the body, looking for his wallet. She looks for cash and to her surprise, the trucker was carrying hundreds of yen on his person. She finds his driver’s license and takes note of his address; surely he had something useful at his home.

Nozomi felt absolutely no remorse for what she was doing; after all she’s been through, all sense of morality was thrown out the window. If she didn’t know any better, she could possibly say that she was getting a sense of excitement from all this. Taking the wallet with her, Nozomi heads out the bathroom and finds the cashier behind the counter. From a glance, it looked as if she was dialing a phone number. Nozomi rushes towards the cashier and grabs her by the hair, forcing her to stand. The cashier drops her phone and screams in pain while Nozomi looks down and stomps on the phone as hard as she could. Without hesitation, Nozomi stabs the cashier in the stomach and continues shoving it as deep as she could.

The cashier lets out a blood-curdling scream as the impact of the knife brings her down to her knees. Nozomi goes down with her so as to not lose her grip on the knife. She yanks the cashier’s hair in a way to force her to look into Nozomi’s malicious eyes. Nozomi silently stares her down as she begins twisting the knife in her victim’s abdomen. The cashier could do nothing but shout and writhe in pain as she was forced to watch her life be taken by someone who was considered the country’s “sweetheart.”

Moment pass and Nozomi violently pulls the knife out and leaves the cashier to bleed out on the floor. Not wanting to waste any more time, Nozomi grabs more gas cans and bottles of water and places them in the truck. Spotting some other useful items, Nozomi grabs a bottle of bleach, a comb and a pack of hair ties, toothbrush and toothpaste, and deodorant, taking all the items to the bathroom. Making quick work of all the items, Nozomi manages to comb through her terribly matted hair, brush her teeth, and apply deodorant after ten long, grueling days without proper hygiene. Thinking of something else, she heads back out and goes to the dying cashier.

She quickly strips the cashier of her clothes—mainly her shirt, jeans, and sneakers—and takes her wallet as well. She hurries to the bathroom sink and begins cleaning off the bloodied clothes, using the bleach to hopefully diminish the bloodstain on the shirt. Once she was satisfied with her handiwork, she gathers her belongings and quickly gets dressed, soaking shirt and all, while heading out the bathroom. She takes a few more items—some snacks, a pair of sunglasses, and a face mask—and heads towards the car.

Once there, she finds a trunk cover and quickly conceals the contents inside it and heads inside the truck. She looks around the seats and finds a baseball cap that had belonged to the dead trucker. She puts her hair into a ponytail, dons the face mask and sunglasses, and tops it off with the baseball cap. Finally having her disguise in place, Nozomi puts the truck in drive and heads back towards Tokyo to carry out the rest of her plan.


End file.
